Big Weekend: Man United v Man City, Wolves, Watkins, Dyche, Real Madrid | OneFootball

After last weekend’s FA Cup action, with its exciting games and baffling refusal to have all of them feature a five-minute delay to check some blurry pictures for where somebody’s toenail might have been, we’re delighted to confirm it’s normal service resumed this weekend. The Barclays is back! VAR is back! What passes for a title race is back!

There are some brilliant games this weekend, as well, and the big twist is the one we all want to watch while pointing and laughing – the most spectacularly beleaguered El Sackico imaginable between Spurs and West Ham – isn’t even on the TV.

That’s how you know the rest must be good. You’d better believe it’s a Big Weekend.

Game to watch: Manchester United v Manchester City

Can’t say fairer than a Manchester derby for a bit of Saturday lunchtime entertainment, can you?

And let’s be honest, derby games are always most fun when both teams are in what is in modern football always for some reason now called a ‘bad moment’.

Now there are levels to this game. City’s bad moment means winning their two most recent matches 10-1 and 2-0 after slipping off the title race pace with some annoying draws, while for United it means going out of a second domestic cup at the earliest opportunity to ensure this will be their shortest season in terms of matches played since 1915, when there was a literal world war happening.

And also they’ve sacked the manager and replaced him with one of Fergie’s Boys, and then replaced that one of Fergie’s Boys with another one of Fergie’s Boys, who was most recently seen leaving Middlesbrough after not getting them promoted.

So yeah, not quite the same thing. But it does all mean this is a game riddled with glorious uncertainty.

For all the contrasts, both teams’ recent Premier League record is one of irritating draws. The key difference again there being that United’s recent run of irritating draws have been against three of the bottom five.

Even if we accept that drawing at Leeds right now is a halfway acceptable result for anyone given their current resurgence, failing to beat both Burnley and Wolves having somehow managed to fall upwards into Champions League contention is immensely daft.

Ifs and buts never got anyone anywhere, but if United had done everything else the same and just won those two games against the two worst teams in the league they would now be fourth.

Instead they are seventh, with a rookie manager, and about to face City and Arsenal back to back with a retreat right back into the mid-table slop firmly on the cards. But it’s derby day, isn’t it? And you just never know on derby day.

Team to watch: Wolves

That’s now four games unbeaten for Wolves in all competitions. It’s not much, but when you consider the record-breaking appallingness of what had gone before, then it is definitely and absolutely something.

Getting Shrewsbury in the cup helped on multiple levels, we fancy. One, a nice easy game to rack up some goals and boost confidence further, obviously, but also a reminder that however bad things might feel for you as a Premier League team – and things have felt really quite abysmally sh*t for Wolves this season – there is always somebody worse off than you. And a team currently hurtling towards double relegation to fall outside the Football League altogether for the first time since the 2003/04 season is certainly that.

In the Premier League, it’s been a win and two draws in the last three for Wolves ahead of a clash with a Newcastle side that has shown the sheer awesome power of three straight wins in this compacted and congested league without ever really looking like they’ve actually compellingly resolved any of the issues that had them rotting in the bottom half to begin with.

Player to watch: Ollie Watkins

Funny old week at Aston Villa, who’ve spent it proving how much better they are than Tottenham on the field and how little that still means at transfer time. Losing out to Spurs for Conor Gallagher is no catastrophe in itself; he is a good footballer who would have been a useful squad player for Villa’s Champions League push but it is abundantly clear that Spurs’ need for midfield legs is far greater.

It’s more irritating for what it represents; another reminder that PSR rules continue to limit Villa’s gravity-defying efforts just as much as being in Birmingham rather than London does. It’s not ‘unfair’ as many still insist, of course. A level playing field doesn’t mean letting every club spend the same amount of money; it means not letting any club spend more money than they actually have.

But still. It’s annoying, isn’t it? And the financial tightrope Villa continue to walk has had further consequences this week with the departure of Donyell Malen. He’s precisely the sort of good-not-great squad player it can be surprisingly damaging to lose midway through a season going well.

It can cause unexpected ripples and leave a hole where no hole existed before. It leaves a lot of responsibility now on the shoulders of Ollie Watkins, who is suddenly very short of back-up.

Luckily his own form has significantly turned around, more than doubling his Premier League goal tally for the season with four in his last four games, but there is pressure now to continue that form.

Sure, Tammy Abraham is set for a return to the club where he sparkled on loan in the Championship back in 2018/19. But that was a long time ago. He scored 17 Serie A goals for Roma in 21/22 but hasn’t managed more than eight in a league season since.

There is new and significant weight on Watkins’ shoulders now.

Manager to watch: Sean Dyche

El Sackico itself may be taking place under the grim dark cloak of the 3pm Blackout but that doesn’t mean there isn’t still an under-pressure manager for you to legally watch on your tellybox.

How long is it, we wonder, until Mr Marinakis grows weary of his latest manager’s fumblings and wearily reaches once again for the lever next to his seat that opens the trapdoor he had installed in the home technical area at the City Ground?

Victory over West Ham last time out may have eased the pressure for now, both on Dyche specifically and Forest generally, but crashing out of the FA Cup at Wrexham to make it five defeats in their last six games doesn’t feel like the sort of thing Mr Marinakis is keen on tolerating. This season, especially.

It would seem fair to suggest that, after a disappointing FA Cup banana-skinning, Arsenal would not sit top of the list of teams you would like to be facing next. But that is Forest’s fate.

And if Nuno and West Ham have had any joy at all a couple of hours earlier against the far stupider half of North London, then an awkward evening could be in store.

Football League game to watch: Coventry v Leicester

The top of the Championship is suddenly all rather more interesting than has looked likely for much of the season with Super Frankie Lampard’s all-conquering Coventry City hitting a sticky patch. Second-placed Middlesbrough have done exactly the same thing, and now the pretty clear-cut top two… isn’t.

Ipswich, who have a game in hand on both, are now just two points behind Boro and eight behind Coventry, who are without a win in their last three in the league. Your Prestons, your Millwalls, your Watfords and most notably of course the Wrexhams of this world are making moves in what is now shaping up to be another vintage race for promotion and play-off places in the world’s most reliably nutbar division.

One team stoically refusing to get involved in all that hoopla, thank you very much, is Leicester. They’ve seen the Premier League and don’t much care for it and have spent this season sat with their arms crossed tutting in resolute mid-table. Interesting to see how they approach this challenge

European game to watch: Real Madrid v Levante

Because suddenly absolutely anything seems possible here for a club that has binned off the world’s most desirable young manager and then been dramatically and, let’s be real, hilariously knocked out of the Copa del Rey 3-2 by Albacete in a match that condensed unimaginable drama into the closing minutes of each half.

What possible nonsense could they have in store for us now against relegation-haunted Levante? The possibilities are deliciously wide-ranging, from further rake-stepping catastrophe to a furious retaliatory beating inflicted on some of La Liga’s smallest fry.