Big Midweek: Tottenham v Newcastle, Chelsea, Kobbie Mainoo, Sean Dyche | OneFootball

It’s Eddie Howe vs Thomas Frank in El Sackico, while the visit of Leeds to Stamford Bridge offers the opportunity for an imperfect but stark comparison between Liam Rosenior and his predecessor.

Meanwhile, Evangelos Marinakis will surely welcome a fourth Nottingham Forest boss should Sean Dyche lose to Wolves and will Kobbie Mainoo finally have a bad game? Almost certainly not.

Game to watch: Tottenham v Newcastle

We wonder if defeat to a 15th-placed Tottenham side sliding into a relegation battle after two wins in 16 games might be enough for Eddie Howe to believe he is in fact not the right man for the job after insisting he would “step aside” if he believed that to be the case.

Aston Villa and Liverpool are acceptable defeats, Brentford at St James’ Park less so; add that run of three losses to another one against Thomas Frank’s Tottenham and most of the remaining #HoweIn Toon fans would surely turn against a manager who undoubtedly has a difficult job in manoeuvring a shallow squad to compete on what was four fronts until last week, but is also definitely now failing to get anything close to the best out of the vast majority of his players.

The tide Howe is fighting against has already swept Frank out to sea. Are there any Tottenham fans who still want him to manage their team? At some point soon they will stop feeling angry and start feeling sympathy for a man arguably the worst football club to be told ‘you’re out of your depth’ at: one that purports to be Big with neither the back catalogue of successes nor the player quality to make it so.

Team to watch: Chelsea

Four wins from four in the Premier League, through to the Champions League last 16 after getting the better of one of the old-guard Chelsea managers, Cole Palmer back and breaking records, it’s going about as well as it could have done for Liam Rosenior. Even his negative, ineffective tactics in defeat to Arsenal in the Carabao Cup semi-final were reported by many as a masterstroke that wasn’t.

Enzo Maresca will be among the critics looking at a run of Brentford, Crystal Palace, West Ham and Wolves and brushing off the winning as a par score – although Chelsea drew with Brentford and Palace under the Italian earlier in the season – and likely view upcoming clashes against Leeds and Burnley with similar disdain.

Leeds are a vastly different proposition at home than they are away – Daniel Farke’s have picked up 22 of their 29 points at Elland Road this season – granting the Rosenior naysayers further opportunity to scoff should Chelsea beat them at Stamford Bridge on Tuesday.

But the 3-1 defeat to the Whites at the start of December was maybe the low point of Maresca’s reign. As Gary Neville said on a night when Maresca rang the changes to his cost, Chelsea were “beaten up” and looked to lack anything close to the “character” – maybe the Rosenior buzzword – that they’ve shown in spades under the new manager.

A victory in which Chelsea display the new-found grit and determination so absent two months ago will offer opportunity for an imperfect but stark comparison between Rosenior and his predecessor.

Manager to watch: Sean Dyche

A man who has somehow managed to carve out a niche for himself as one of the last remaining Premier League relegation-battle specialists is leading Nottingham Forest towards the drop after being sacked by Everton for doing the very same thing.

Eight points from the last five games is a perfectly reasonable return in the dogfight but four defeats on the bounce before that and West Ham’s remarkable uptick in form has left Forest in a precarious position, three points above the relegation zone.

Dyche is now facing the wrath of a group of fans, the majority of whom didn’t want him in the first place,  who didn’t take kindly to the stark difference in vibe felt between their football club and Leeds after Farke’s side brushed them aside last time out.

Growing frustration will surely turn to all-out mutiny should they fail to beat rock-bottom Wolves at home on Wednesday and grant Evangelos Marinakis an opportunity to appoint his fourth permanent manager of the season which we fully expect him to grasp with both hands.

Player to watch: Kobbie Mainoo

We find ourselves agreeing with Owen Hargreaves more than most pundits these days – certainly the ones with a Manchester United bent -and couldn’t think of any specific retorts to his claim that he’s “never seen Mainoo have a bad game”.

He got a tad carried away in then suggesting the 20-year-old is some sort of George Best regen, but we’re happy to excuse his excesses as we too often fail to avoid hyperbole when watching the Red Devils academy graduate glide across the pitch as he has done since Prince Carrick arrived to break him from the dungeon master’s chains.

What a fool Ruben Amorim is. And our frustration in him denying Mainoo football will turn to fury if he’s ruined his chances of appearing for England at the World Cup. Here’s hoping his performances continue to be at a level where Thomas Tuchel – for all of his faith in the tried and tested players for England – has no choice but to select him.

West Ham’s Mateus Fernandes will provide a decent test, but we fully expect Mainoo to stroll through the game as he has done with all others.

EFL game to watch: Birmingham v West Brom

Eric Ramsay has failed to revert the Baggies slide towards League One after replacing Ryan Mason at the helm at the start of last month. He’s failed to win any of his five games in charge, losing three of them to leave a football club which hasn’t been out of the top two divisions since 1993 circling the Championship drain.

They’re now just one point above the relegation zone and face a Birmingham side making a push for the play-offs and consecutive promotions after three wins and a draw in their last six, featuring a victory over league-leaders Coventry City.

An already huge game thanks to the proximity of the two clubs made massive by their relative future-defining targets.