Five Things We Learned from This Weekend's Football

Oh, we've been here before, haven't we? It seems like almost all of Chelsea's wins this season have confirmed their title win, but this one seems to have done so mathematically as well – and yes, it was a contentious 1-0.

It's all very well talking about Chelsea being boring (they are), and about how their rivals are merely whinging out of bitterness (they are), and about how José Mourinho has quite needlessly conducted himself this season with the manners and dignity of Kim Jong-un at his sixth birthday party (he has). The ultimate response, however, can only be that if you don't like it, then try beating him with your better brand of football.

At the moment nobody is remotely close to doing so, but it's more to do with a poor crop of managers than squads. Wenger, Van Gaal, Pellegrini, Rodgers: none of these are ever going to finish above Mourinho in a league. Forget Bale, Ronaldo, or Pogba – the Premier League can only be saved by Pep, Klopp, Simeone or Ancelotti.

sometimes I wonder… is soccer worth it? I would rather meditate in a lake then stress out about transfers n soccer. life is peace yo
— Man Utd Facebook (@MUFC_Facebook) April 26, 2015

Another miserable defeat for United has further bolstered the theory that their weird spell of victories was not, in fact, a new beginning. It was proposed as the point where Van Gaal's philosophy finally clicked, the point where United bought into the new regime and began to play with style and swagger, rather than what it was: a collection of narrow wins based on David de Gea and Ashley Young being in relatively ridiculous form.

Yet there's been something strange about these recent results. Being held like a child at arm's length, windmilling the air in futility while Chelsea nick a 1-0? Passing the ball around the penalty area of a Tony Pulis side without creating a single chance and losing? The fans proclaiming the manager as an inspirational leader despite that and assuming a goal would've just occurred by magic? Hang on, is that – is that a fucking mask? Why, it's 2010 Arsene Wenger!

There are so many levels on which this could be worrying. A tedious fan culture based on groupthink and self-suiting ideas of "class". Praise being forever heaped on a team that never wins anything. The only thing missing is the "spend some fucking money" chant, because United did exactly that, and ended up with Falcao and Di Maria. Sure, we all rightly laughed at Gary Neville's ridiculous "they stand against the immediacy of modern life" quote at the time, but fuck me, it almost looks like he was on the right track. If even Gareth Bale can't be a big-money success back in England, we'll know something is very wrong.

It's questionable as to whether there has ever been a worse manager in human history than John Carver. At least Paul Gascoigne didn't hang around too long at Kettering Town. Carver has been almost unique in not putting a foot right, in turning a poor run of form into the complete torpedoing of any shred of morale in the squad. After laying into the foreign players, in a team consisting only of foreign players and Mike Williamson, this weekend he accused Mike Williamson of deliberately getting himself sent off because he didn't have the guts for a relegation battle.

Newcastle are now just two points from relegation, and look entirely capable of not picking up another point. If they do go down, it would be a stunning collapse, perhaps the greatest of all time, one that would have us talking of teams' potential to "do a Newcastle" for years. As a team that has spent most of their existence being a sort of Lidl version of a big club, Andy Carroll having a Denis Law moment in that final game against West Ham at the end of the season would surely be the most fitting send-off.

Were it not for Newcastle's reported interest in their esteemed manager, Derby might have sacked Steve McClaren already. There's the popular school of thought that a manager should not be sacked unless he's taken the club beneath the level at which he was appointed, but in practice this is shite. Simply, this season, he finished outside the playoffs with arguably the best squad in the league.

It's a pretty disastrous failure, just as getting Derby to that point was a great success. There seems to be no middle-ground with McClaren. You either get a total disaster, a humiliating collapse, terrible photo-ops, rotten PR and universal failure. Or you get a title or a Europa League final, and the conversion of a team of perennial underachievers into go-getters. This season just confirms it's not even the team that decides which – he can go from brilliant to shocking with no other variable changing. Perhaps England would've won the World Cup if they'd kept him on and lived through one of McClaren's upward swings. As it is, he's probably doomed to remain at this level.

With the aforementioned descent of Newcastle, the fact that almost everything else is settled, and the insatiable appetite of the British public for schadenfreufe, Sunderland have surely become the team everybody loves to love. Which is pretty fucking impressive when you're still playing Adam Johnson, given what other things the British public have an insatiable appetite for.

There is, as Sunderland always flickeringly obtain, a simple joyfulness to this. A team containing Jermain Defoe simply cannot go down, it's not possible. Just keep it tight and keep hoying long balls forward and eventually, yep, the defender will misjudge a header and Jermain's onto it, and bang – it's 1-0. Jordi Gomez is an acceptable foreigner to provide creativity. Leadership? Characters? Check out Catts and Sheasy here.

If this sounds like the Harry Redknapp school of management transposed to the North-East, that's because it is. The man is the father of English football management. Sure, he has no long-term plan or strategy, but check your privilege: this is muck-and-bullets relegation-battling, where nothing but pragmatism counts. Fuck the fact that Defoe's legs are about to go and we've given him a ludicrous contract for three years – he'll keep us up now, and that's all that matters. This is real football.

@Callum_TH