Five Things We Learned from This Weekend's Football

Arsenal-Liverpool
The draw here was strange – both the fairest and yet most outrageous result possible. It's hard to imagine another football match which has ever satisfied fewer people – no glory, too tame for schadenfreude, and pretty much nobody came out of it looking well. Simon Mignolet is probably the man who profited the most from it. That tells you all you need to know.

It's a surprise that Liverpool failed to win here – or, indeed put in a display resembling competence, considering the formation Rodgers picked. In the build-up to the game, there was a quite extraordinary outburst from the man, who seemed to think that arranging players in a certain position on a whiteboard was proof of his genius:

"Six or seven months ago I was the Manager of the Year and I was tactically this and that, and now, because we have lost two world-class players, I am useless. I must have just dreamt that about Liverpool playing 3-4-3 in the last game. What do people think that was, a bit of luck? A British coach playing 3-4-3? A foreign coach doing that would be a tactical genius."

He's pretty lucky this wasn't filmed, really, because it makes Kevin Keegan look like Boris Spassky. And yeah, it makes even a victory pointless now – the man has quite clearly lost it, and is ultimately doomed to a sacking. Like Ian Holloway, Sam Allardyce, and for a darker version, Malky Mackay, when you start ranting about foreigners, your time is running short. At least Wenger's not quite there yet.

Newcastle-Sunderland
You may be thinking I got this one wrong when I proclaimed this as the best derby in England, and looking at Sunday's particularly unthrilling 0–1, yeah: you might have a point. The best moment of the game came when Steven Taylor headbutted the post.

Thing is, all the North-East players seem to play for the rivals of the teams they support. Jack Colback famously defected from Sunderland to Newcastle. The matchwinner, Adam Johnson, plays for Sunderland having come through at Middlesbrough. Admittedly this seems to be part of some weird "Greater Sunderland" masterplan in Wearside, where their reclusive American owner must fancy himself as the Mackem Slobodan Milosevic or something and they just try and claim ownership of anyone vaguely from the North-East, but still.

All of that doesn't matter, though. I didn't say it was the best derby, I said it was the purest. And if football is in that weird position where it has to provide escapism yet mirror our own lives, what better is there than this? Putting in token levels of commitment and lacking in real quality while earning a living by doing things that we would've rather died than do as youths? The parallels between fans and players are still alive in the North-East.

Southampton-Everton
With Ronald Koeman having finally broken Southampton's godawful run that even saw Sheffield United get a win over them, it's Roberto Martinez who's firmly back in the shit. A slow start is now looking like a serious problem, and with most of his stars of last season struggling, the defence playing badly, and Romelu Lukaku playing like the ball is still attached to the cow it was made from, things are looking pretty grim.

He does have an additional weapon to keep his image looking good, though – David Moyes. Following the weird tendency for mass delusion that tends to follow his departure, even Neville Southall was getting on board, casting him as some cross between Hitler, Iago, Pol Pot and Gary Megson. As always, an unpopular predecessor is still the best thing a manager can have.

We are 10th in prem and have not done great Ex managers ambition was to finish around this place and call it success

— Neville Southall (@NevilleSouthall)December 20, 2014

Charlie Austin
With his hat-trick consigning West Brom to defeat, it looks as though Austin might actually get more than the solitary England cap that looked to be his destiny. Already he's edging towards what we might call "Rickie Lambert territory", that is being too good for a small club but nowhere near good enough for the various big clubs and countries that will have to desperately and unfairly pin all their fragile hopes on you. It can't be said to be anything other than a curse.

Really, Austin is the human embodiment of the English problem, the fact that it will always be him, or Lee Cattermole, or Jordon Mutch, or Stewart Downing who has the really great game whenever Roy Hodgson shows up. There's no case to be made that he's much more than a big unit who can finish – until England produces better players, then sadly Austin won't be allowed to be just that. His inevitable appearance at Euro 2016 is going to feel like he's been conscripted.

Thierry Henry
This weekend also saw Henry get a career retrospective every two minutes on Sky's adverts as the greatest man ever to play the game. We might be overdue a retrospective on whether Henry was actually cool or it was mid-00s blindness, but nobody can deny his achievements, so fair fucks.

Just one thing: this is all ahead of his punditry career, but it seems pretty self-defeating. Surely the true greats rarely become pundits? They either slink off into obscurity or get wheeled around by their club for people to get their photos taken with like a waxwork. Try imagining Franco Baresi arguing with Jamie Redknapp about Stoke's zonal marking, or defending Nigel Pearson's managerial record. Exactly.

@Callum_TH