Big Weekend: Manchester City v Liverpool, Arsenal, Liam Rosenior, Jarrod Bowen | OneFootball

The international break is over, and club football returns to save us all.

Obviously the woke mob won’t let us enjoy it properly. Their sickening campaign to ban Easter football means there is not a lick of Barclays to be seen across the long weekend, leaving us with just four FA Cup quarter-finals for sustenance.

As well, of course, as the anti-woke EFL who say no to the wokerati and bravely, patriotically plough ahead with a proper Good Friday-Easter Monday double-header schedule as nature intended.

Game to watch: Manchester City v Liverpool

For Man City, a domestic treble remains a perfectly plausible outcome from a season when they’ve never really looked all that convincing really. Having outclassed Arsenal in the Carabao final they will hope they also sowed doubts that might leak into a Premier League picture that is not as clear-cut as it might appear.

That current nine-point gap can look very different if City win their game in hand against Crystal Palace and beat Arsenal at the Etihad.

And then there’s the FA Cup, where in the quarter-final they meet a Liverpool team whose season offers tantalising potential for spectacular glory but more probably really quite dramatic failure.

If they fluff their lines in the Champions League against PSG over the next couple of weeks and then fail to qualify for next year’s competition, not even victory in the FA Cup could save a season that was supposed to be one that hailed the true arrival of an Arne Slot Dynasty after last year’s title success. Slot was supposed to be the new Guardiola; now next season might go on without either of them.

With City’s laser focus now on the league and Liverpool eyeing one of two routes back into next season’s Champions League, it’s fair to say this post-interlull FA Cup engagement is in many ways the most low-key game left for either.

But it should still be good, and it’s not to say it doesn’t matter; just that other games will matter more in the grand scheme.

The two Premier League games between the pair this season have both been highly entertaining. City were comfortable 3-0 winners at the Etihad in a game that might have looked very different had Virgil van Dijk not seen an equaliser just before half-time chalked off by our old friends in the VAR booth.

And the Anfield game was a contender for the season’s best as City overturned a 1-0 deficit in the closing minutes before the sensational final act provided by the Haaland-Szoboszlai hullabaloo and, yes, another intervention from the VAR fun police who insisted on following the ‘Laws’ and ‘rules’ and not allowing a goal that had to be disallowed to instead stand because that was funnier.

So, you know, hopefully some more of that kind of thing to enjoy.

Team to watch: Arsenal

That is, of course, if the poor loves can even fulfil their FA Cup quarter-final fixture at Southampton. What with all those injuries. We’d imagine they’ll have to give serious thought to forfeiting this and the other trophies they’re competing for due to simply not having any players left at all.

What we think will actually happen, though, is that there will be just enough players available for them to deal with Southampton and then the injury crisis magically starts to dissolve into nothing just in time for the midweek Champions League game against Sporting.

What serendipity! What good fortune! What entirely predictable behaviour that is not remotely unique to Arsenal but which they have nevertheless perfected to such a perfectly unarsed level of housery that everyone pretends it is just them!

Chuck it in the pile with boring football, scoring goals from set-pieces and celebrating.

Nevertheless, be interesting to see how Arsenal do indeed respond to an unusual situation. They’ve had two weeks to stew on the demise of their Quad God dreams in what was a really quite alarmingly ropey performance in the Carabao final.

They’ll beat Southampton, obviously, but could really do with it being reasonably convincing without expending any energy whatsoever to get momentum back in their on-field season after that rare yet significant setback followed by an interlull played to Mikel Arteta’s tune.

Manager to watch: Liam Rosenior

Because it really does feel like we might not have many more opportunities. We’ve had our fun and taken the p*ss, a lot, but it is a vaguely absurd situation.

Sure, it’s largely Rosenior’s fault that he has become such a figure of fun because absolutely nobody is forcing him to say the astonishing guff that he says, but it’s not really his fault that he’s been over-promoted well beyond his level by a set of thin-skinned suits who are insistent their way is the right way and would rather have a yes man than an awkward sort in the dugout.

Rosenior isn’t going to rock the boat, but unfortunately he’s so far out of his depth that the players are starting to do it instead. That feels like we’ve mixed a metaphor somewhere along the way there, but you get the point.

Does feel like Chelsea will once again be looking for another new manager to oversee the football sideline of their player trading company in the summer, and perhaps sooner if it looks like they might miss out on the Champions League lucre.

Or, you know, if they lose to Port Vale this weekend. That’s really going to age some men.

Player to watch: Jarrod Bowen

Always a fool’s errand trying to pick a player to watch on an FA Cup weekend when the team news can be so unpredictable even at this late Wembley-adjacent stage of the competition. Especially when you’ve boxed yourself into a corner and have to pick a player from a game between two teams with other more distressing things than cup glory at the front of their minds.

Both these teams remain in with a chance of doing the Full Wigan by winning the FA Cup and getting relegated in the same season, and that leads us to Jarrod Bowen, who has confirmed that all of West Ham’s games are now cup games.

After coming off the bench in England’s 1-0 defeat to Japan at Wembley, Bowen said:

Which makes perfect sense. But then he also said this.

‘As well’ is the key here. That makes the FA Cup quarter-final a final, West Ham’s last seven Premier League games all finals and, if it comes, the FA Cup semi-final also a final.

It’s a lot of finals. Leeds also have many finals over the next couple of months. We’re not remotely ruling out either of these teams making it all the way to the FA Cup final, or for one of their players to come out and say “This cup final is a cup final, make no mistake about that.”

Football League game to watch: West Brom v Wrexham

The real and magnificent answer is, of course, all of them thanks to the EFL’s refusal to bow down to the demands of the woke brigade who want to cancel Easter football. It’s a bountiful Good Friday-Easter Monday feast of league football to enjoy.

From Good Friday’s programme, you can’t say fairer than a game with repercussions at both ends of the table. West Brom have shown recent signs of life in their fight against the drop, while Wrexham now find themselves just outside the play-off spots as the sprint for the line ramps up.

European game to watch: Inter v Roma

Two games to watch, really. This one on Sunday to see if, crucially, there’s another stumble incoming from leaders Inter in a ticklish Easter Sunday clash against sixth-placed Roma. And then tune in again on Easter Monday to find out which of Napoli or Milan or neither are going to capitalise on said slip if it has indeed happened.

If Inter haven’t slipped, then it’s still good, because whoever loses that Monday night showdown between second and third can probably forget about the Scudetto for this year.