Five Things We Learned from This Weekend's Football

(Illustration by  Sam Taylor)

It feels different this time. You might think we've been here before - and we have, so many times - but that's precisely the reason why the Wenger Out campaign has never been stronger. Like an ethnically-diverse UKIP, the movement has gone from 'cranks' to 'worthy of respect' to 'looking like they might actually get their way', all in the space of a couple of years.

United's victory was ridiculous. It was probably their worst league performance of the season: Arsenal were all over them and it could've been out of sight after twenty minutes. But the pattern was familiar. Sit back, soak up the pressure, hit them on the break. This time, it was achieved accidentally by a motley rabble, as opposed to the ruthless discipline and military precision of 2009, but the end result is the same.

This is brilliant: Fellaini as shocked at being started on by Wilshere as everyone else — Daniel Harris (@DanielHarris)November 23, 2014

The message hasn't been particularly consistent in the time gone, however. The chants of "spend some fucking money" are gone, and "spend some fucking money on a defender and a defensive midfielder" is harder to find a tune for. It's become clear that, far from the need for world-class players, some other, deeper malaise is afflicting Arsenal, and it's gonna take more than Febreze to get it out.

It might have started at some point in the Wenger era, but it's not certain getting rid of him will instantly exorcise the place. Looking at United, it seems obvious that Ferguson's influence went deeper than anyone thought – the psychological hold he had on his own team and opponents must have been terrifying. Wenger, so divorced from his glory days, is offering the stench of blood to the opposition and an invitation to collapse to his own players.

Where to go from there, though? Jurgen Klopp is the most popular choice. And there'd be no choking in big games against rivals or losing the club's best players every year with him in charge, that's for sure.

Wenger isn't the only one feeling the noose begin to tighten after this weekend, of course. After returning to the site of what now probably looks like the high water-mark of Rodgers' Liverpool – 3-0 up against Crystal Palace last season before it all fell to pieces – this time is was more straightforward. A 1-0 lead, three home goals, Neil Warnock flashing his pearly whites to the boys in the studio, and Rodgers now really pushing it.

Everybody knew Suarez was great, but nobody knew exactly what effect he was having on the team. He was a pretty selfish player, and Liverpool had someone almost as prolific in Daniel Sturridge - it wasn't too unreasonable a gamble. And since the fringe players on the squad had been terrible, why not spread the money over a few signings? It seemed like a great idea.

We now know it was a fucking shit idea. But a fucking shit idea is one thing. A fucking shit idea that you've just seen another team in the exact same position do the season before and fail miserably is quite another. No team in history has ever succeeded by going, "Hey, why don't we copy Spurs?"

Moyes made a low-key return to football by taking the helm of Real Sociedad, and fans there have a pretty good idea of what to expect already after his side managed a 0-0 draw in his first game.

It's a pretty good gig. Not really dissimilar to Everton, but with the grim horror of post-industrial Merseyside swapped for the sunny climes of San Sebastian. Meanwhile, Moyes gets to rebuild his career somewhere where he can truly be loved, rather than at United where he'd always be a laughing stock. In Spain though, Moyes could have a Damascene conversion and be thought of as a wildcard, out-of-the-box thinker who specialises in thrilling football.

Maybe more managers should follow suit, and Allardyce can go to Bologna to meet the Allardici scion of his extended family. It's weird to think that times gone by are a comparative golden age for Brits abroad, with the Gascoigne and Waddle years a distant memory on the horizon. Even in a supposedly more universal age, where we can stream any game they have, moving abroad now offers something different. Instead of being a place to further your career, it's an opportunity for reinvention. That seems weird, but it makes sense – who's rushing to their laptops to watch a David Moyes side?

"Have Spurs turned a corner?" seems like a stupid question. Spurs never turn a corner. They're an Odeon that only ever shows Thelma and Louise, ploughing in a straight line off the same cliff every weekend for the amusement of any onlookers, but hey, everybody has to have their brand, even if all the good ones were already taken.

The last thirty minutes at Hull at least felt significant though. Before the equaliser, there was a very real sense Mauricio Pochettino might need that time to save his job, before another defeat doomed him to being another kill of a promising foreign manager by the White Hart Lane monster. We all have dreams of our own death, and for football managers, it probably comes at the hands of Steve Bruce's Hull City.

Instead though, Spurs found some grit from somewhere and managed to turn it around. Results elsewhere mean a top-four finish is still a possibility if they can embark on a good run. It's still Spurs of course, so they'll likely fail, and even success would just mean more of the same routine of misery, but a history-changing result is a history-changing result. Whether it can be called a good result though, when it extends the amount of time you have to spend in purgatory in North London, is up for debate.

Look, this has been a bad season so far for anyone employed to write Premier League review columns. Same shit, different weekend, again and again. And most of it's not even new to this season - Arsenal are mentally and defensively fragile? Liverpool have followed up falling just short of the title with a plane crash of a season? We're not getting much to go on here.

While it might be true that you're about as likely to find a copy of Either/Or on a camgirl's wishlist than anything particularly new or insightful in this Premier League season, one clear pattern is at least emerging. More than any other, this is the season of schadenfreude. Everybody is terrible, and even Chelsea fans will have their title win dulled by the fact they knew it was all over in October. But that's not where the real fun is to be had.

There will have been more than a few Manchester United fans who, indifferent to the difference between fourth and fifth, celebrated Jack Wilshere's injury more than the win, and cheered the final whistle more for Arsene Wenger's humiliation than their own success. Arsenal fans will contend themselves with the fact they will almost certainly still finish above Spurs. Everyone likes to laugh at Liverpool, but Liverpool can laugh at the fact that Martinez's Everton looked to be such a flash in the pan. And everybody can strike downwards at Harry Redknapp's likely relegation with a hugely expensive squad.

The problem of course is that it's not really good viewing. United-Arsenal was once the biggest and most ferocious game on the planet, but moved through a period of grim inevitability to combining that with rank incompetence. Liverpool are funny but not fun. And Man City have to be the most boring villains ever to take flight. The season is pretty much a write-off already, and we should probably just let Swansea, Southampton and West Ham have the other top four places and have that long winter break everyone wants. If you can stomach Arsenal's inevitable late-season run of form to clinch fourth for yet another year, you've got a hardier constitution than me.

​@Callum_TH