Big Weekend: Man City v Chelsea, Man United, Andoni Iraola, Rodrigao Bentinha, La Liga returns | OneFootball

We are now deep in the most Barclays period of any season, a time where games apparently take place every day and nobody actually knows who they’re playing until the game begins or indeed what day it is or why it’s a team they only played three weeks ago.

It’s just games. And then some more games. Just Our League forever and ever and ever. It is the most wonderful time of the year and don’t ask too many questions about why so many of the games seem to be low-effort, low-tempo, low-quality 0-0 draws. Don’t worry about that at all, okay?

We’ve double-checked the calendar and this next bunch of games definitely take place on a weekend. We’ve double-checked their size and confirmed they are large. It is with great confidence, therefore, that we present the latest Big Weekend.

Game to watch: Man City v Chelsea

It already was, probably, before the Enzo Maresca business blew up. We do rather admire the man. If the rumours are true and he really did try and use reported interest from Man City to coax an improved contract out of notorious manager-killers Chelsea, then that is rather wonderful.

You’ve already been there 18 months, man! Look at the history! You’re already an ancient, decrepit manager on borrowed time by Chelsea standards!

Anyway, he’s gone now. We’re not sure it will make Chelsea any better or worse in the long run. He’s never really felt like he’s that important a figure there, frankly. Neither conspicuous problem nor compelling solution.

Now Chelsea have to decide what happens next. Do they double-down on their unique approach to the game? Or do they abandon the experiment altogether after throwing eye-wateringly vast sums of money at it?

And in the meantime, a nice soothing trip to Manchester City to keep things ticking over. That should be easy enough, shouldn’t it?

City’s title-sniffing winning run is over after being held to a goalless draw at Sunderland. But all the great and good get held to a draw at Sunderland these days.

There was little sense of wheels falling off, but it does leave City precious little wriggle room here. They can’t now really afford to be handing more ground to the galloping Gunners and must cash in on any confusion or lack of focus under, as far as know at this point, caretaker boss Calum McFarlane.

Team to watch: Man United

Your man is never, ever getting that haircut, is he? After victory against Newcastle, it appeared but a formality for United’s win counter to tick along to two via a home game against a Wolves side that was losing to absolutely everyone, including 4-1 at home to Man United just a few weeks ago.

But the thing we’re all coming to realise with Manchester United is that what has gone before – even if it’s only a week or three ago – has quite simply no bearing whatsoever on what will happen next.

There is no such thing as good form or bad form with United. You can’t extrapolate anything from anything they do. They simply are.

Sometimes they’ll play quite well and win rather impressively. Sometimes they’ll battle to a result that shows plenty of fight and spirit. Sometimes they’ll lose narrowly to a better team. Sometimes they’ll lose badly to a worse team.

And sometimes they’ll fail to beat a Wolves team that had two points all season.

Ruben Amorim didn’t invent this version of Manchester United. All their recent managers have been capable of confidently turning corners that lead directly down another drab cul-de-sac. Especially Erik Ten Hag, but especially Ole Gunnar Solskjaer.

But Amorim has now perfected the art. Instead of a buoyant United side with a couple of festive wins under their belts, this is now once again a reduced and uncertain Man United. And they must now head across the Pennines to face a Leeds side who actually have turned a corner in recent weeks and struck upon something that works in a six-game unbeaten runs featuring a win over Chelsea and now a pair of draws against Liverpool.

Does feel like Leeds should probably sort Man United out good and proper this weekend. Which probably means Man United will actually win 4-1.

Manager to watch: Andoni Iraola

Even by Bournemouth-under-Iraola standards of streak, this season is lurching towards the preposterous.

We all know that Bournemouth’s schtick is to either be the best team in the country or the worst at any given time. But they really are pushing it this season.

The run of five wins and three draws in eight games (after an unfortunate opening defeat to Liverpool at Anfield before everyone knew that was quite bad) that lifted Bournemouth all the way up to third in the table now feels like a lifetime ago.

It’s now been 10 games without a win since a 2-0 victory over Nottingham Forest back in October, and it’s fair to say Arsenal aren’t the side you’d necessarily choose to face to try and bring a 10-game winless run to an end.

There’s better news ahead, because after that it’s Dr Tottenham and they are 100 per cent the very team you’d choose to try and bring an 11-game winless run to an end.

But it does seem likely to get worse before it gets better for Iraola. And he’s also just clearly got this whole thing backwards too.

Had Bournemouth started badly and then hit their stride he would be a solid favourite for all three of the either definitely or feasibly available Big Six jobs at this time. The bad run at the start of the season would have been attributed entirely to losing his entire defence in the summer and explained away far more easily than it is now this run of despair has come after he’s already proved he didn’t actually need all those brilliant defenders at all actually.

With Antoine Semenyo’s departure also now imminent, it’s an odd old time for a manager who should be looking at the next step up the career ladder having done all kinds of brilliant things in his current job, but who might instead soon find himself coming under actual pressure in his current role having watched Bournemouth slip right down into and now out the back of the great fog of mediocrity that is this season’s Premier League mid-table peloton.

Player to watch: Rodrigao Bentinha

Never has the disconnect between a manager and fanbase been more transparent than at Brentford v Tottenham last night.

Tottenham left with precisely what they intended to – a clean sheet and a precious point in their noble quest for an 11th-placed finish. But that is not at all what the fans want or expect or consider an acceptable target.

A point at Brentford is not a bad result for anyone this season. We’re halfway through the season and the only visiting team to win there this season is Man City, and that was a tense and tight 1-0 win.

The result is fine. The manner of it not so much. Most Spurs fans would have settled for a point last night; but they will not settle for playing only for that point and showing neither the Dare nor the Do to strive for anything more.

That is what Thomas Frank still doesn’t grasp, and why last night’s draw might actually be his most damaging result yet. Because it highlights the gulf that exists between him and fans who spent the entire game singing for lost heroes from Dele to Christian Eriksen and Mousa Dembele. Even Eric Dier’s song got an airing as, of course, did Brennan Johnson’s. Along with more than one refrain of Boring, Boring Tottenham.

The fans were clear and unanimous in their displeasure – and this is the away fans Thomas Frank has previously praised in contrast to those mean home ones who make it impossible for his players to beat even Wolves at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium.

But in Frank’s mind, the trip to Brentford represented a job well done.

It also represented the first time since the disastrous trip to Arsenal in November that he had paired Rodrigo Bentancur and Joao Palhinha in midfield, adding a layer of nonsense atop that cement-mixer of a midfield by asking a third defensive midfielder in Archie Gray to play as a kind of false 10.

All three are good players. All three are perfectly valid and useful members of Spurs’ squad. They absolutely do not and cannot together constitute a viable midfield three.

We’ve said before and we’ll say again that Palhinha and Bentancur specifically are an either/or proposition.

But Spurs simply don’t have the numbers and their manager lacks the inclination to gamble.

With Lucas Bergvall, James Maddison, Dejan Kulusevski, Pape Sarr and Xavi Simons all still unavailable for assorted reasons this weekend, we fully expect to see Bentinha once again in dreary harness in Spurs’ midfield against Sunderland.

Except this time it’s at home. And it won’t just be 1700 travelling Spurs fans voicing their displeasure at the sheer indignity of it all.

Football League game to watch: Birmingham v Coventry

Coventry’s serene march to the Premier League has encountered a minor bump in the road after a run of two wins, three draws and two defeats in the last seven games, but the good news for Frank Lampard and the lads is that nobody else is making a compelling case of stepping up to put any pressure on the leaders.

One team with lofty ambitions to do so would be Birmingham, but after a run of four wins in six games up to the start of last month it’s now seven games without a win after a painful 3-0 defeat at Watford on New Year’s Day.

European game to watch: Espanyol v Barcelona

La Liga is back, back, back after its Christmas break, with a local derby in Barcelona the headline act.

Espanyol have their own interests too – they get back under way in fifth place and two points behind fourth-placed Villarreal – but certainly won’t mind putting a spanner in Barcelona’s title-cruising works either.