Big Weekend: Tottenham v Liverpool, Aston Villa, Martin Odegaard, Enzo Maresca | OneFootball

A Saturday-heavy weekend of Premier League action that nevertheless looks full of potential gifts for us all.

Sunday’s one game looks a doozie, between title-chasing Aston Villa and consistency-seeking Manchester United, but it can’t quite take Game to watch honours. That has to go to Tottenham v Liverpool, a fixture that absolutely never fails to deliver one way or another. Most recently what it’s delivered has been goals. Mainly, it should be said, Liverpool ones.

Elsewhere you’ve got another fascinating looking clash between Newcastle and Chelsea, while it’s all eyes on the teamsheets to see how Mikel Arteta has used a rare full week on the training ground after Arsenal were so oddly poor last time out against Wolves.

Truly, tis a veritable festive feast of football.

Game to watch: Tottenham v Liverpool

If for no other reason at all than the simple fact games between Tottenham and Liverpool nearly always reward you for doing so.

Among some recent Premier League highlights from games between these two: Liverpool enjoying a 5-1 title party; Liverpool winning a chaotically wild ride 6-3 at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium on this same pre-Christmas weekend a year ago; Liverpool beating Spurs 4-2 after briefly looking like they really might blow a 4-0 lead; ‘Well done boys, good process’; Liverpool actually blowing a 3-0 lead and then still winning 4-3 anyway.

And that’s literally just the last five Premier League games they’ve played. The even better news? Right now both teams are quite stupid, when historically the data shows us that it only needs one or even neither of them to particularly be so for a chaotic classic to ensue.

We assume that Thomas Frank will do everything he can to try to make this game quite boring. We assume he will fail. What we can’t be remotely sure of right now with this pair of daft teams is who that near-certain failure will ultimately benefit. Does slightly feel like Spurs have both more to gain from any descent into chaos, but also a lot more to potentially lose.

It definitely feels like a game that, if it breaks a certain way, has the capacity to end Thomas Frank’s Spurs reign. Or it could produce an entirely illusory sense of new-found optimism that buys him just enough time for Spurs to waste their £100m January transfer budget on players for him only to realise they’ve made a terrible mistake in the first week of February.

We’re also quite confident this latest instalment won’t manage to be the most controversial game between the two, but we’d all bloody love it to be at least a little bit controversial, wouldn’t we? Even if we’re not supposed to want that.

Whatever happens it feels almost guaranteed to feature at least one and almost certainly both of a) goals and b) controversy and we’re not even going to do the traditional bit in such a scenario of whimsically noting that it will probably now be 0-0. It won’t be 0-0.

Team to watch: Aston Villa

We remain entirely fascinated to see just how far Aston Villa can take this current absurd run of theirs, and this weekend they face one of the more interesting challenges in the shape of Manchester United.

Interesting because while with Villa we now increasingly know what we’re going to get – and that is very good indeed with a high probability of responding admirably to adversity as and when required – we have almost no idea what to expect from United one week to the next.

Their general trend is clearly upward, but from a low base, and their fluctuations in performance remain wild and unpredictable.

Villa, though? Villa you can rely on. Especially at home where, that early-season wobble apart, what they do is pretty much this: win.

After starting the season at Villa Park with a drab draw against Newcastle and horrible defeat to Crystal Palace, they’ve won nine in a row across the Premier and Europa Leagues, conceding only four goals and keeping five clean sheets.

Take that record back to the start of 2025, and it gets even better. This year Villa have played 26 home games in all competitions, winning 21, drawing four and losing just that one to Palace.

Player to watch: Martin Odegaard

We’ve singled out Martin Odegaard here, but really it’s an assortment of Arsenal players we’re watching. We’ve gone for Odegaard because it feels like he’s the most likely starter at 10 after Eberechi Eze’s struggles against Wolves last time out.

But really, apart from Bukayo Saka, every element of Arsenal’s attack misfired in that one, and after a first midweek off since August, it’ll be interesting to see how Mikel Arteta has used some rare training-ground time this week to come up with a solution for a ticklish and suddenly rather vital trip to Everton.

Does Viktor Gyokeres get another start up front? Does Eze move to the left to accommodate Odegaard? Or do his struggles for Arsenal from that wider starting position mean it’s someone else who gets a go there for this one with Eze dropping out altogether?

There does feel like a gathering uncertainty around the Gunners right now, and precisely who Arteta picks and where he picks them for a first trip to the Hill Dickinson does feel like it might be rather revealing for what’s to come over the second half of the season.

Manager to watch: Enzo Maresca

Another interesting week for the Chelsea manager. Having spent a fortnight talking Chelsea out of another title race with great success, he then used the return to winning ways against Everton to mutter darkly about how he’d just endured the toughest 48 hours of his time at the club due to an unspecified but clearly very upsetting lack of support from… somewhere.

Chelsea then tried to banana-skin themselves in the Carabao against Cardiff and this weekend travel to face a Newcastle side that have, if anything, become even more unpredictable than Chelsea are. Who knows what happens there. Probably an absolute masterclass from a manager whose attention-grabbing efforts of recent weeks have now apparently got him in the conversation to be Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City replacement when the time comes.

Football League game to watch: Southampton v Coventry

It was back to winning ways for Frank Lampard’s Coventry City last time out after a nightmarish two-game winless run threatened the serene return of Frank Lampard to the Premier League at the helm of his current club, Frank Lampard’s Coventry City.

Frank Lampard’s Coventry City should still be fine, holding as they do a 12-point cushion over third place ahead of a trip to Southampton, who know a thing or two about Premier League football. But not this season. And almost certainly not next season. Which is where they differ from Frank Lampard’s Coventry City.

European game to watch: Villarreal v Barcelona

Villarreal’s six-game La Liga winning run has carried them to the fringes of the title race, currently trailing leaders Barcelona by eight points but with two games in hand.

Maths fans will have already spotted that makes this weekend’s visit of said leaders particularly significant; if the Yellow Submarine can extend that winning run to seven, then they bring themselves within striking range of Barca ahead of the Christmas break.