Five Reasons to Watch Football This Weekend

​Calling a football club a "one-man team" is among the more desperate charges to level at another side, since it's usually brought out in bitterness when the team in question has just beaten your own team. It ranks, therefore, alongside Sheffield United away fans resorting to "your support is fucking shit", or "we support our local team", while 4-0 down at Stamford Bridge in the FA Cup – even if it's true, nobody cares and it doesn't matter.

But teams that have spent heavily and built a team over a long period aren't supposed to be at this stage. Despite that, Arsenal and Manchester City are both great sacks of shit being lugged up a hill by a South American sherpa. For the moment, it's keeping them from real disaster, but it's been no match for Chelsea's team effort. Even a mid-table side like Southampton comfortably outperformed them just by having their shit vaguely together for a few months.

Of course, being a one-man team doesn't preclude you from being a good side, or at least winning the title. United have real pedigree here – they were ludicrously reliant on Eric Cantona for a long period in Ferguson's first title, and repeated the trick several times more. They did it in 2012 with Robin van Persie, and would have done it again in 2010 with Wayne Rooney, had their man's ankle not fallen off towards the end of the season. The reason they were so dependent on him? They'd just sold Cristiano Ronaldo, their old one-man team.

So, it can be done. The problem is that it usually works best when everybody is a bit of a shambles. It's more evidence pointing towards what we already knew: competence, as ever, is the enemy of fun.
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It'll be a bit of a shame if it turns out that Louis van Gaal really has steadied the ship at Manchester United. Their post-Ferguson decline was supposed to be like the fall of Rome – successors having nervous breakdowns; relegation at the hands of a former legend; Ferguson coming out of retirement to no avail; and 25 years of being a cup team. It looked pretty good fun for all involved before.

Unfortunately – with modern football being what it is – it looks like United have finally leaned on their sponsors and crammed a £150 million thumb into the dyke, because they now look pretty comfortably on course for at least a top-four finish. Whether there's been some great sea change and all aura and mythos is lost, however, can be decided during their game against Southampton.

Southampton should lose this. The script goes as follows: they either completely fail to turn up and get a 4-0 tonking, or they come roaring out of the blocks into a 2-0 lead, only to piss it all away. Their past two games – a combination of misplaced bottle, ill luck and just not quite having enough drive – have cast doubt on their status as top-four challengers. And if United really are back to being a decent side, and not an absolute rabble of overpaid mercenaries operating under no plan whatsoever, that streak should continue here.

Southampton can instead content themselves with the fact they've basically become Tottenham, if such a thought can ever be comforting. "Spurs are always Spurs" gets trotted out with every Soldado shank, every Vertonghen stumble, every suicidal back pass. But they're talking about something intangible – in the past few years Spurs have had Andre Villas-Boas and Tim Sherwood at the helm. They've had Luka Modric and Scott Parker. They've been many teams, but still Spurs, and they'll still be Spurs if they hang around in mid-table for a while and Southampton take over their mantle as Champions League challengers.

So there's a lot to look forward to: near misses, maybe one forgettable European campaign and regular Europa League football to fill those lonely Thursday nights and exacerbate their alcoholism. Big teams have already started thinking of them alongside Spurs and Everton by saying, "Fuck it, shall we just buy Southampton's best player?" every transfer window. They might as well go the whole way.
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If football really is a religion, then Stoke vs Arsenal would be the fixture at the heart of it.  A dualistic, eternal battle between light and dark, two opposing forces that collectively make up the universe. Mark Hughes and Arsene Wenger. Steven Nzonzi and Tomas Rosicky. Fuck, even compare ​the fans outside the grounds on deadline day.

True to form, both sides tend to win on their home turf, so Arsenal's mini-resurgence is likely to come to a halt here, as Stoke have survived the departure of Tony Pulis completely intact. In the same way Wenger's eventual replacement will have to be reminiscent of him, Stoke had to go, "Hmm, who plays horrible violent football and gets results?" Nobody prefers it, but a brand is a brand, and someone's got to be those guys.

The beautiful thing to tie it all together is that they are completely dependent upon one another. Stoke need a dainty, lily-livered set of bottlers like Arsenal to show up to be smashed for a big scalp to prove their tactics have merit. And Arsenal need Stoke to point at whenever anyone suggests getting rid of Wenger or maybe putting the ball in the fucking box once in a while. They need each other, so tune in to catch the continuation of this beautiful marriage.

Look, we all know Chelsea aren't this good, right? It's a nice little team, very effective, but it's a pretty long way from the greats. They're winning the league at a canter because nobody else has anything resembling an effective plan, but the talk of going unbeaten is massively premature. It has to be, surely? God wouldn't let a team with Gary Cahill in it go unbeaten.

Even if God abandons us, though, we can turn to the big man downstairs. His premier minion, Alan Pardew, will be attempting to do the job by taking on José Mourinho and trying to finally put a dent in that record. They outplayed Manchester United and crushed Tottenham, but what can they do against the dark forces of the netherworld that keep Pards in a job every year?
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This has nothing to do with anything, but I couldn't not include it

There's a regular routine to be had every Remembrance Day. British football descends into insanity over poppies and the surrounding outrage, and I sit back, thankful that I now live in France, a sane, serious country where that sort of mawkishness could never happen. Now, it turns out that I was wrong, and that the culprit was not Marine le Pen, but rather Emmanuel Petit.

As you know, Britain went to war in 1914 so that James McLean would be booed for not wearing a poppy. Yet, until now, we've not known what motivation those French conscripts had for fighting on in the face of the German war machine twice last century. But now, at last, the answer can be revealed: so they would never have to build a statue of Thierry Henry.

"Sometimes I think that if we'd been overrun by the Germans, we'd be better run. I have great difficulty with the French – I have never seen such arrogant, smug, lying and hypocritical people," raged Petit, while also defending his handball against Ireland.

You know how it is: you just want to make a polite case that your mate should have a statue built of him, and the next minute you're saying you wished the Nazis won the war.

​@Callum_TH

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