Five Things We Learned from This Weekend's Football

Sunday saw an exciting result for Arsenal fans, but one in the eye for "Things We Learned" column writers across the land. Finally, we had to write a new couple of paragraphs and stop copying and pasting the same four-lines-about-mentality-with-a-Wenger-zip-joke-at-the-end. 0-2! A clean sheet! Away! At the champions!

Somewhere at the Emirates, there must be a wall of stopped clocks, and Manchester City turned up at just the right time. Olivier Giroud did it in a big game rather than just in that favourite dream you have. Santi Cazorla looked like the player we all thought he was when he joined rather than just another lightweight inconsistent Spaniard. Francis Coquelin looked like a genuinely good footballer, rather than a never-gonna-make-it Gallic clogger who's overstayed his welcome and was thrust into a game far bigger than him because he was the least shit option available.

Perhaps the problem with this is that, if Arsenal fans imagined Wenger ever finally getting it right in the big games, they envisioned it being a victory in a cup final or one to spur them on in a title challenge. As it is, it's made them upgrade their chances from "quite possible" to "quite likely" in the bid to nick fourth ahead of a rancid United team and a mid-table side everybody thought were going to get relegated. It's the same destination, just a slightly more scenic route. As I said before – copy, paste – Wenger has managed to look far better simply by moving the shit half of the season to the start rather than the finish. Still: those old paragraphs will come in handy for the Chelsea game at the end of the season.

As City stumble – and suffer the ultimate humiliation of being beaten by Arsenal in a big game – the most sterile title race in living memory is swinging back in favour of Chelsea.

It leaves the upcoming match on the 31st looking more crucial – if both teams were even, it would be relatively unimportant so early on, but City need to come back again and they're probably going to need to beat Chelsea to do it. For Mourinho, it's the perfect title race, the kind he thrives on – the slow, grinding war of attrition. No Aguero moment, no Michael Thomas moment, but rather a singularity of one John Obi Mikel moment stretched out over nine months. This still isn't a great Mourinho side, but he's kept the bad streaks down to being shorter than Paul Scholes' flaccid penis, and it's probably going to win him a title.

With Christian Eriksen continually bailing Spurs out this season, we're probably at the point where we can say it's more of a tribute to West Ham than a lambasting of Spurs that, "Yeah, happy with that, they're pretty even," would be the response were you and a pal to pick them on a game of FIFA.

Most unheralded of Allardyce's tenure is that he has been able to break his team out of a very long cycle of, at best, mediocrity. Upton Park has seemed for a long time like The Stadium of Light, Hillsborough or the Riverside, a cursed land where nothing can grow, the earth salted some time in the mid-90s by someone using the phrase "sleeping giant" once too often. A club like West Ham, paying big money to sign Andy Carroll and Stewart Downing, and them both recapturing their best form and it working out excellently for all concerned? We still haven't appreciated how truly incredible that is.

Before oil, Scotland's greatest export used to be its people. The Highland Clearances, land reform and Glasgow getting turned into a sort of steampunk Mordor all helped to encourage them to move away, and then other places ended up benefiting from, variously, their intellect, their creativity, their know-how and their bent towards sadistic violence. Thankfully those days are now over, and Kevin Bridges isn't forced to become the President of the United States to earn his keep, but there are two exceptions: not only George Galloway, but also those who work in football.

Who can help but shed a tear when Scotland's best prospects have to leave at an early age? When a great man like Alex McLeish is forced to flee to Belgium to really be understood? And where Real Sociedad, of all places, get to enjoy the stylings of David Moyes since his cruel ousting from Old Trafford?

During his travails at Manchester United, he was compared unfavourably to more forward-thinking managers like Jurgen Klopp, Roberto Martinez and Brendan Rodgers. He may have lost to Rayo Vallecano this weekend, but generally speaking they're all in the shit while he's having the time of his life. And as for modernity – Moyes' reign at Real Sociedad has consisted of beating Barcelona, eating some crisps and precisely fuck all else. He has identified his brand brilliantly and worked to appease the modern football fan: not aiming for clean sheets or discipline or moneyball, but of ending up on TheSPORTBible once a month. Modern managers? You didn't know one when you saw him.

Perhaps nothing sums up the laughable rules over "fit and proper" owners than the fact that Mike Ashley looks like he'll be thwarted in whatever dastardly scheme he has in mind for Rangers by the world's most cynical fans rallying behind a convicted South Africa-based tax dodger.

Much like strikers, a total lunatic isn't necessarily the worst option for a Chairman. What really keeps fans sweating at night is the thought of someone slightly shit who can remain wedged in their club's boardroom for years and years, and Ashley appeared to have perfected the formula for that – maximum skulduggery without crossing the line and being banned by the FA or brutally butchered in an alleyway.

Now, though, he looks like he's actually going to suffer defeat in getting hold of Rangers, and Newcastle are deeply in trouble. A relegation battle looks like a very real possibility, and while some intriguing names have been mentioned for a new manager (and not all in the way that Coloccini "intrigued" us), who's going to take a job that Alan Pardew walked away from, to join a club that was too small for Tony Pulis? A repeat of 2009 looks a distinct possibility, with Hatem Ben Arfa in the Michael Owen role, watching helplessly from the bench.

@Callum_TH