Five Things We Learned from This Weekend's Football

For Some Weird Reason, Everyone in the Premier League Is Awful
Another day, another hard-fought defeat in the intensely weird progress of Manchester United's season. £150 million spent, and the back four that finished the match consisted of Luke Shaw, Michael Carrick, Paddy McNair and Antonio Valencia. In the event, this back four held a City with a numerical advantage for most of the game, while Robin van Persie, Wayne Rooney, Angel Di Maria, Adnan Januzaj and Juan Mata struggled to create a chance between them.

United might feel they have a claim to a morally nicked point, but that would be to ignore that City probably should have had about four penalties. They may be on better ground pointing out that Chris Smalling's daft error cost them the game, but they might also wish to ask why they only turned up after he'd been sent off. In short, nothing about this side makes any sense at all.

It's not really a bold, contrary opinion to state that Manchester United were doing better under David Moyes than under Louis van Gaal. Talk about more attractive football, injury crises, Ed Woodward, or whatever - this season, they've gotten fewer points against worse teams with a better side. There are excuses for not storming to the top of the table, but there are not excuses for being level on points with Alan Irvine's West Brom.

Sure, the table is odd at the moment, but we're in November. Only four teams have won half of their games or more, and two of those are Southampton and West Ham. West Ham! The table is precisely as odd as it is - United level with basket-case Newcastle and worst-side-ever Aston Villa, Arsenal fourth with four wins out of ten but level with West Ham - because, Chelsea aside, these competing teams are terrible. They have a lot of good players, they can play some nice stuff, but for some reason almost every team in England's top division looks collectively awful this season.

Spurs fans celebrate Harry Kane's deflected last-minute winner vs. Aston Villa

There Are Advantages to Having an Idiot Predecessor
​​Speaking of Van Gaal, he may find a kindred soul at White Hart Lane, even if this weekend Mauricio Pochettino managed the opposite, scabbing a win while putting in a generally diabolical performance. Yet if the two men are proving one thing, it's that the greatest curse and the greatest gift is to follow an absolute clown. Coming into a squad recovering from the reign of a no-hoper has left both with a bit of catching up to do, but some serious mistakes in the transfer market and beyond have been overlooked because of their predecessors.

Really, Van Gaal's every complaint about poor defending should be followed with, "Well, why didn't you find room for a proper fucking defender out of that £150m then?" and anything Spurs can say is tempered by the fact that this was the one season they decided not to gut their team and instead went for incremental change, albeit from the starting position of having a shit squad full of tossers. But hey, you didn't come out on camera and basically say, "I've lost the dressing room." You didn't say, "We're going to make it as difficult as possible for Newcastle," and you managed to leave the press conference without your trousers falling down and you wear a suit like a proper grown-up, so you're better than the last guy.

Spurs aren't in a bad run or struggling to adapt to a high-pressing game. Van Gaal has abandoned his early talk of imposing his own, very distinct philosophy. They're just bad. They might not always be bad, but there's no point making excuses. Think of it as an opportunity for personal growth - no football fan is truly an adult until they have accepted that their team is simply, purely terrible and made peace with the fact. United and Spurs fans: your childhood is over.

Who'd Be a Promoted Side?
It all seemed fun last season, didn't it? We were all marvelling at how Sean Dyche looked like Vladimir Lenin starring in The Bill, cooing at Anthony Knockaert and praying Harry Redknapp fucked up the playoffs. But now the misery for the promoted sides has really set in, and despite their varying levels of spending and the Stadium of Light apparently being built on some sort of ancient Brythonic burial ground, it looks like all three are in the process of being fucked off back from whence they came.

It's only a few years since Swansea, Stoke, and the like were able to come up and establish themselves in the top tier. Blackpool and Owen Coyle's Burnley made valiant efforts too, going down in blazes of glory. And in that time, the Championship has become a great league with genuinely good players and has produced two of the ​most exciting season finales in English footballing history). It remains a big step up but surely at least one of this season's promoted sides should be handling themselves a little better.

Arsenal: Still Arsenal
Arsene Wenger's judgement of big buys appears to have improved, as Alexis Sanchez looks like the player who is making the impact Mesut Ozil should've. Where Ozil looked about as excited to be at the Emirates as ​Frimpong did to be at Barnsley and hid in difficult games, Sanchez has been willing to carry the team on his shoulders when necessary, and came up with a vital goal again at the weekend. It looks like being a great signing.

The problem is that Arsenal still only have four wins from ten, and are in fourth by virtue of the appalling competition. Despite being a huge player for the side, Sanchez doesn't appear to have improved Arsenal at all. They are always the same. And perhaps, the thought creeps into another Gooner's skull every day, they always will be.

When "a player who can make things happen out of nothing" is spoken of, Arsenal fans were imagining someone to score a late free-kick to beat Barcelona, or create the goal that finally allowed them to unpick Chelsea's defence. Instead, Sanchez' was the goal that finally broke down Burnley, a side of Derby/Sunderland proportions, at home.

Each conclusion this column has drawn from the Premier League this weekend points to one big thing: there are more good players in the Premier League than ever before but other than Chelsea, none of the teams they're in look any good. Surely no league has ever misused as much talent as the Premier League is in 2014. Daniel Sturridge, Angel Di Maria, Falcao, Alexis Sanchez, Erik Lamela and Mesut Ozil might all be on the next BT Sport ad, but they're all going to be scrabbling to avoid a Europa League spot come May.

Rivals: Rangers & Celtic

The Return of the Greatest Show on Earth
We end, though, on a happy note. It's not every weekend that the most exciting moment comes in the draw for the Scottish League Cup, but finally, Rangers and Celtic will be reunited.

There's long been a school of thought in Scotland, ​for pretty obvious reasons, that the Old Firm derby is something of a blight on not just the game but indeed the whole country that would be better off dead. Without it, however, the world hasn't been a particularly happier place. I mean, there's been some interesting things happening in Scottish football, but unless they're going to get rid of Celtic and Rangers, it'll be dying even more rapidly than it is.

If your league and players are all rubbish, you should embrace the fact that you have the greatest derby in the world. It might be violent, bigoted, tribal and drive decent men and women to utterly psychopathic behaviour, but that's what derbies are for. Tottenham-Arsenal? Yeah, do you have a version of the "Hokey-Cokey" that includes the line: "Whoaahh, point your 9-mil at him"? Do you sing songs about wading through your enemies' blood and have whip-rounds for terrorist groups to try to kill as many of the opposition's players and supporters as possible? And can you tell who supports who by their name alone? Yeah, thought not mate. Step aside - the greatest show on earth is about to return.

Follow Callum on Twitter ​@Callum_TH

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