Five Reasons to Watch Football This Weekend

United vs Liverpool
​ There has to be a case to say United-Liverpool is the worst massive game in the world. This is the closest thing England has to an "Eternal Derby" – two teams whose highest watermarks have rarely coincided, and a pretty parochial cultural context. ​Ship canals, for Christ's sake. Worst of all, it's produced so few memorable games. There's the 1977 and 1996 cup finals, and a few good games in the 90s, but most of them irrelevant. The hatred might be there, but compared to an Old Firm or Clasico, it's two admittedly pretty hench bald men fighting over an admittedly expensive comb.

This one might feel important, but it's not. We all know that the Premier League finishes 1. Chelsea, 2. Manchester City, 3. Manchester United 4. Arsenal. Fifth or 13th doesn't make much of a difference to Liverpool. They're like the Third Reich after Stalingrad: best to just send the kids out and hope people take it easy on them. And the result of this match won't change much either way.

Of course, a battering could see Rodgers sacked. It's not out of the question either – this is a United side who only score from set-pieces and mistakes against a team with Dejan Lovren in it. But really, would Rodgers getting sacked change anything? It's pretty apparent now that last season was a missed opportunity but also a total fluke – a great player having a stupendous season and carrying a rabble to a very near miss. So savour this game: it'll probably be a good one, but it's nothing more than playtime between two flawed sides who have much more important shit to deal with.

Alan Pardew's War On the World
​ Following on from last week's observation that Pards' raison d'etre is now solely to piss people off, the fixture computer agrees. He's now been dealt a fixture where no result imaginable will do anything other than infuriate the fans of the opposing team.

Consider the possibilities. Newcastle beat Arsenal at the Emirates – the top four looks in doubt, Wenger gets another cartload of abuse, and every Arsenal player is suddenly shit again. Newcastle lose heavily to Arsenal at the Emirates – another feather in Wenger's tinfoil cap, and vindication for a man whose overall plan is leading them nowhere. A draw – a bit of both and everybody goes home bitter. The man can simply do no right.

Perhaps the biggest indignity, however, would be if Newcastle did triumph. Pardew and Wenger might be about as opposite as managers come, but it would be pretty funny to see Wenger beaten at his own game – building a team around adolescent, inexpensive Frenchmen. Perhaps that, rather than vegetables, is the real legacy Wenger will leave on the English game.

The Lesser Spotted Glaswegian Prem Manager
​ It's been a pretty rough time for Scottish managers in the Premier League in the past couple of years. Not so long ago, Alex Ferguson was king, David Moyes was thought of as a progressive, smart coach, Owen Coyle was being touted for Arsenal, Steve Clarke was impressing, and Kenny Dalglish was helming Liverpool. In 2011, there were seven Scots in Premier League jobs. Even more pointedly, they were all Glaswegians. They have 10 percent of the population of England and their own league to worry about, yet they had the place sewn up.

Now, we only have these two – Paul Lambert, a man desperately trying to cling onto a job few other people would want, and Alan Irvine, the most bizarre appointment of the season. Ferguson has retired, Steve Clarke is in the wilderness, David Moyes has had to flee the country, Kenny Dalglish is doing whatever he did in his previous wilderness years and Owen Coyle has taken over at Houston Dynamo.

It's a truly sad decline. We mourn the loss of the hardman in midfield, but the loss of the hard manager is very real. Nigel Adkins reading poetry, Brian McDermott doing Dylan, Harry Redknapp… tell me we don't need more managers who can give this kind of  ​spectacularly dour interview.

Nigel Pearson's Meltdown
​ You know how it is. Your wee provincial club has just been promoted, and is playing with grit and some flair and grinding out results. But then you get a couple of injuries, form and confidence goes south and you're telling your own fans to "fuck off and die".

Such is the fate of Nigel Pearson, recently charged by the FA for "using abusive and/or insulting words towards a spectator". For a man who gives every post-match interview as though someone's putting his knob in the cameraman's ear in an attempt to make him corpse, it was a surprising turn of events. This is what the relegation battle does to people. Pearson is out there, living on the edge, while Redknapp and Dyche retain their sense of cool.

There's not really much better than seeing a manager in open warfare with his own supporters, so hopefully Pearson manages to keep himself in a job and do a number on City. We're just waiting for him to call Gary Lineker a jug-eared bellend and Leicester "Coventry for people who can't afford the real thing" and we're all set.

The Day the Banter Died
​ Sad times as we go to press, as Ally McCoist has stepped down as Rangers manager. Well, possibly. He may still be taking charge of the team tonight. Or he might be staying until the end of the season. Nobody's quite sure – and this has all happened six hours before a game, so the team bus sneaked out of the back way of Rangers' training ground, with McCoist not spotted on board.

If anything sums up what a shambles Rangers have been over the past few years, that would be it – McCoist is his own caretaker manager. Either that or he's done a Larry David, resigned in a huff and then realised he'll be lucky to get a job in the Thai Premier League so just decided to show up in the manager's dugout like nothing at all happened.

You might think that recent events at Rangers off the pitch have been an impenetrable mess that only determined study from someone with an emotional stake in the club could begin to comprehend, and you'd be right. But it's a weird world up there. Consider this – tonight, a very, very large number of fans will say "Alex McLeish? I'd absolutely love it if we could get him in, but he's probably too big for us."

​@Callum_TH​

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