Five Things We Learned from This Weekend's Football

Regular instances of luck for a football team are normally the residue of talent and determination. There was an element of luck to Manchester United's Champions League triumph in 1999, just as Liverpool enjoyed moments of good fortune during the '80s and Leeds in the '70s. The last-minute winners, the endless gritty 1-0 wins and other assorted strokes of luck, are common to successful sides across the globe. Imagining it as pure chance is the foremost sign of a diddy team, up there with retiring a shirt number for the fans and Englishmen calling themselves "ultras".

Louis van Gaal's United, however, have largely proven an exception to this rule. For weeks they were truly awful, playing brain-numbingly tedious football and showing a general lack of confidence, composure and interest. Yet they were victorious again and again, despite being thoroughly outplayed by pretty much any team who rocked up and had a go.

That all changed on Sunday, when they faced a fairly good Tottenham team, outplayed them and deservedly won 3-0 thanks to goals from Marouane Fellaini, Michael Carrick and Wayne Rooney. Nobody does self-sabotage like Spurs, but United's superiority was stark.

The real kicker, however, is that this is a United side that has just done the unthinkable: lost a big game at home to Arsenal. It is nice to know that some certainties survive in modern football. Amidst the upheaval of billion-pound TV deals, endless foreign imports and Stoke City being able to buy Bojan, perhaps the only relic that remains is Spurs' ability to always let you down.

The most astonishing result of the weekend saw Aston Villa tonk Sunderland 4-0 away from home. "Tactics" Tim Sherwood oversaw a total rout of the beleaguered Mackems, winning the game in the first half before declaring and handing a debut to gloriously named 16-year-old Rushian Hepburn-Murphy (looking terrified, above).

Following the sacking of Paul Lambert, the last of the dour Scottish managers who once dominated the Premier League's midriff, Villa's change to an English everyman like Sherwood couldn't be more dramatic. And yet few of us know what managers actually do. We can imagine ourselves picking the team and dishing out advice to professional athletes, but the day-to-day reality remains a weird unknown. Events like this – and men like Sherwood – make you wonder if there really is that much to it. Pick your best team, keep the dressing-room vibes high and you're rewarded with a 4-0 win at Sunderland. Sherwood might be a bit of a prick, but he's fuelling all our Football Manager fantasies.

The Saturday evening meeting of Manchester City and Burnley saw two men on opposite trajectories. Sean Dyche looks like he'll be a Premier League manager next year, regardless of what happens to his current employers. He's turned what seemed like a hopeless situation around, produced fine performances from by far the cheapest squad in the league, and his geography-teacher-who-owns-a-motorbike schtick is playing well with the press.

In the opposite dugout sat Manuel Pellegrini, a man who appears to have given up following City's recent Champions League humbling by Barcelona. The teamsheets have invariably been unimaginative and straightforward, with no meaningful attempt to change a losing formula. He's in the Roberto Martinez/Sam Allardyce club, bearing the mark of a man who started off with big ambitions, only to realise he'd fucked it up some time during the winter and then hit holiday mode for the rest of the year. Our guess is that his departure from Manchester in May will involve a one-way ticket.

For some time now, the writing has been on the wall for Gareth Bale at Real Madrid. If deciding to pass rather than shoot during an easy home win becomes a major international news story, with old club legends wheeled out to criticise you, it's fair to suspect there's some kind of agenda being hammered.

It continued this weekend, when he attracted the ire of Cristiano Ronaldo for having the cheek to score two goals against Levante. The first came from a rebound after Ronaldo's effort was saved by the 'keeper; the second saw Bale deflect the Portuguese star's off-target strike into the net. The announcement of a goal for Bale rather than Ronaldo caused boos in the home crowd.

It's hard to do anything when you're in that sort of position. It's a loveless marriage, and sometimes you don't need to shag the babysitter or run over the cat for things to go sour. His old admirers at Manchester United will be hoping for a drunk WhatsApp message sometime soon.

Surely only the giddiest of Arsenal fans are fantasising over a late title push, despite their 3-0 win over West Ham putting the Gunners a single point behind second-placed Man City. Some vague crumb of rationality is surely still buried somewhere among their number, yet to be branded as an official club crouton to decorate Ty's official Arsenal soup-flask.

The less rational Arsenal fans – those who take the time to argue with Piers Morgan on Twitter – should be reminded that this season has been yet another in a long line of missed opportunities. Chelsea's early aura of invincibility has long-since been exposed as a mere purple patch, while City have had one good run of form all year. Despite their opponents being so flawed, Arsenal have still remained out of the title picture. The serious questions remain.

@Callum_TH