Five Reasons to Watch Football This Weekend

It'll be interesting to see how Chelsea recover from getting a shoeing at the hands of Spurs, because it's difficult to put into words quite how shocking it was. A Mourinho team conceding five goals was one thing, but at Spurs? A team who always, always lose these sorts of games? After going behind? And after taking a commanding lead and holding onto it with empty-headed fuckwittery to spare? It's unthinkable.

So with Manchester City storming to joint first, Chelsea get a nice easy one as the smouldering remains of Newcastle United visit Stamford Bridge. As hateful as Pardew was, one of the strangest things is that he never seemed to really be loathed by his players, despite following in the footsteps of Chris Hughton, one of football's most likeable men. There have been no scenes of jubilant celebration on the streets of Newcastle – as you might see elsewhere with the loss of a Roy Keane, or a Gary Megson – so unless it's like the death of Caligula and people are just too terrified to come out of the house and won't believe he's actually dead, Newcastle are still feeling this one.

On top of that they have a seemingly incompetent man in charge in John Carver, and have an injury list longer than one of Sammy Ameobi's many limbs. In short, they're fucked, and Chelsea will probably get to avoid talk of a crisis for another week at least. As for a future manager? Well, Ashley always likes doing things on the cheap, and he's already paying one gaffer to sit around doing fuck all. Step forward, Sir Ally McCoist.

Manchester City signing Wilfried Bony was yet another depressing sign that the club is desperately short on ambition. It's been four years since their last world-class player was signed in the shape of Sergio Aguero, and since then it's been a procession of cloggers, flops, and shit defensive midfielders from Portugal. I mean, Maicon was there for a bit, for fuck's sake. Those heady days of Garry Cook claiming Kaka had bottled it seem long ago now – the club used to have ambition, and a shitload of money, but be unable to put the two together. Now they have everything in place except the glimmer of stardust which they seemingly promised.

That was, until the next day, when it became apparent that City had somehow felt the need to create an entire football team purely to sign an ageing Frank Lampard for a year – the move to City now seems to be a 'loan' in the same sense that Nelson Mandela was on loan to Robben Island. I'm not claiming Lampard is an equivalent figure to Madiba, of course, but he might actually prove decisive in a very tight Premier League title race, and well… yeah, look, everybody has their role in life, that's all.

Even so, while it's hard to deny the banter value of such a move, are we really seeing strong rumours of Messi leaving Barcelona without City even getting a mention? Nowadays, the penchant for ludicrously expensive vanity transfers has weirdly passed to their rivals United, who claimed to be above that sort of thing while they were still winning things and had a black hole of debt preventing any decent players being bought, and now are getting Falcaos for fun. Imagine how different things could been if they'd have both just embarked on a space race-esque quest to outspend each other – The Ardwick All-Stars versus the Gorton Globetrotters. Manchester ought to be ashamed of itself, again.

As they say in theatrical circles, every exit is also an entrance to another place. Alan Pardew's one-man tragedy may have ended on Tyneside, but it's only to be reborn in South London, and why not? With Brighton and Essex clubs not yet penetrating the top flight, it's the natural home for the snake oiliest man in football.

With this move, Pardew has launched a stunning rebrand as a romanticist – he had the big job at the big club, but he's seen his old team in trouble, and stepped in to save them from relegation. It's odd to think that there's a club where Pardew is actually liked, where someone was willing to pay a lot of money for him, and that once he was cheered on and idolised, even as a journeyman centre-back.

Now, those days are here again. Let the good times roll, let fucking old cunts be put in their place, and crack open a tin of pineapple chunks in celebration. He's home.

You have to feel sorry for Oldham, really. A club that almost lost half of its sponsors, had its name dragged through the mud, saw its own fanbase divided, and had a complete PR meltdown. Like Icarus flying too close to the sun, it was all as a result of chasing a golden ticket – the prize of signing an OK Championship striker who hasn't played any football for years on a free.

The appeal of lucre in football explains almost everything, so you could understand greedy chairmen willing to sell their club's soul for a great player on a free, but Ched Evans? It can't even make the slightest bit of financial sense. More worrying still was the apparent determination of the Oldham board to push it through, from the chairman talking of the club being "prepared to withstand the barrage of abuse" and wanting to keep the fans "in check".

So, here we are. The one thing it appears football club chairmen were willing to put money aside for and act on their principles is… the rights of rapists. Come back, Lord Longford, all is forgiven.

Yeah, I know, this is one of the most recurring subjects in this column apart from "huh, Arsenal, eh?" and "Michael Carrick is a useless clogger" but you people need to understand. There are five teams within five points of the top, and we're in January and a team that isn't Celtic is in first place. England's currently enduring a duopoly of its two most tiresome teams, and that's more exciting than Juventus, Real Madrid and Bayern Munich's processions, so where else are you going to go?

This really has the potential to be some serious, tell-your-grandkids, Sky-documentaries-in-30-years-time shit. Aberdeen look best placed to do it, with a little help from Marty McFly, and it really would be one of the most stunning upsets in British football for decades. This is what will be really remembered, and it'll be a nice appetiser for you ahead of the certain mayhem of that Old Firm semi-final at the end of the month.

Yeah, you might say it's competitive because Celtic are just shit, but who cares? The whole of Scottish football is shit. Has been for ages. Doesn't stop it being fun, especially when two of those five teams are one that just came up through the playoffs and one that is Caley Thistle – fucking Caley Thistle, a team from the fucking Highlands, who have about five fans and whose best player is some guy who was in my year at school. Just pick a horse at random and get involved, you'll have more fun than whatever bunch of absolute mugs you support are doing.

@Callum_TH