A Manchester derby between a pair of deeply vulnerable giants headlines another bumper weekend full of potential Premier League nonsense – nowhere is that more the case than at St Mary’s where the division’s two most stubbornly stupid teams go head to head in a game where absolutely no outcome would represent any kind of surprise.
Game to watch: Manchester City v Manchester United
This Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now Manchester Derby appears one of the trickier to call in recent years. And that’s unhelpful because even when it appeared entirely straightforward to go ‘Well City will win’ it hasn’t always quite gone to plan.
Both teams are working through some stuff. There’s a neat narrative between the contrasting nature of the struggles. This iteration of Pep Guardiola’s City is a team in its death throes, in need of a significant renovation and with lingering uncertainty – despite a new contract – of whether the manager retains the hunger and desire to see those changes through.
In the red corner, a team with growing pains, still in the very early stages of learning what being a Ruben Amorim team even looks like while having to pretty much learn that on the job while playing a game every three days for the foreseeable.
Even in a welcome 2-1 Europa League win in Plzen on Thursday night there were now familiar signs of confusion in the United ranks. There remains a sloppiness to their play as new patterns are slowly learned, and individual errors as a result of the unfamiliarity still abound. Andre Onana had another difficult night after a horrible game against Forest in the league and even now the Etihad isn’t really a place you’d relish going as a goalkeeper having a bit of a moment.
It was always going to take a long time for Amorim to bend a largely unsuitable Man United squad to his ways, and the transition is going to feature more painful moments to join the back-to-back defeats against Arsenal and Forest. United might be the one team that wouldn’t choose to get a Man City fixture out of the way right now. City are at their most vulnerable in years, but United are not yet fully prepared to take advantage.
Should all make a fascinating if potentially very miserable afternoon all round. Merry Christmas.
Team to watch: Nottingham Forest
This really does feel like another huge opportunity for Forest to make another massive statement in a season that has already been full of them.
They face Aston Villa already sitting just above their midlands rivals at the head of the cluster of clubs massed behind the top four and should have every confidence in their ability to open that gap here.
Villa have won their last three games, but the two Premier League runs in there came at home against the division’s two worst away teams, and while the European win at RB Leipzig is more notable it comes with the related cost of existing at all.
Not since September, when a facile 3-0 win at Young Boys was followed by success against Wolves, have Villa managed to win straight after a Champions League engagement. It’s not new information that teams facing that extra burden for the first time often struggle with it, but it’s still so relevant.
After each of their last two European nights, Villa have been well beaten away at a team above them in the table. Forest, having had a week to freshen up and enjoy that memorable 3-2 win at Old Trafford, have a wonderful chance to make that three.
Manager to watch: Russell Martin
“When I see Ange I see a man with conviction in values that he won’t compromise on, which I admire.”
Yes, Russell Martin, we’re quite sure you do. With Martin having issued perhaps the single most self-serving compliment in the history of compliments, you do marvel at just how stupid Southampton v Spurs could get in a battle of the two most mule-like managers in the division.
Neither Ange Postecoglou nor Martin have yet shown any willingness to budge from their preferred methods despite obvious indicators in the shape of results and personnel that it might be worth at least considering something slightly different.
And that really does reach a head for Martin in this fixture. There is perhaps no clearer challenge to Martin’s stubbornness than this.
We know quite a lot about Postecoglou’s Spurs, don’t we? Not much of it is positive right now, but one thing we know they remain capable of is pinching the ball high up the pitch against teams who want to play out from the back, with deadly consequences. Look what they did to actual Man City a few weeks ago and you shudder at the thought of what they might do to Temu Man City on Sunday night.
But Spurs also haven’t won a single game since. Against teams ready and willing to do things differently, Spurs have been fairly easily stymied. Fulham, Bournemouth and Rangers have all been able to get something against Spurs. None of those teams could be accused of bus-parking, but what they didn’t do – and this is mad – is just do exactly what Spurs would like them to do and play directly into their hands. We know, it sounds crazy.
Chelsea did go toe-to-toe with Spurs and trusted their superior quality would win out in the end. It did, but 4-3 was far closer than it should have been and both Spurs’ early goals came directly from Chelsea making mistakes in dangerous areas of the pitch and paying a high price.
This is a simply wonderful time for Southampton to be meeting Spurs. Their confidence is shot, the manager is a dead mate walking, the few remaining players whose hamstrings haven’t spontaneously combusted under the rigours of Angeball are exhausted and they have almost entirely run out of defenders. Spurs have played two very busy, very tiring games since Southampton last took to the pitch.
If Martin can compromise his fanatically-held beliefs just a tiny bit and play even just halfway sensible football for just this one game, a famous and vital victory is well within Southampton’s grasp. If he doesn’t, even Spurs in their current reduced state are as capable as anyone in the league of picking them off and embarrassing them.
We’re almost certain neither manager is going to budge from Their Way even a single inch. We kind of hope they don’t. We genuinely can’t wait for this game. One way or another, it’s going to be ridiculous.
Player to watch: Eberechi Eze
In the most related of contingencies, Eze’s 2024 has mirrored Palace’s as a whole. He was magnificent when Oliver Glasner came in and a huge part of that sparkling finish to the 2023/24 season. But after a frustrating and difficult summer with England and the loss of Michael Olise to Bayern Munich, he has struggled this season with form and fitness.
There are, though, just a few glimpses since his latest return from injury that brighter times are coming for Eze and Palace. He was much more like his old self in the 2-2 draw against Man City, and there aren’t many better games for a Palace player to really find his best form than Brighton away.
This will be Glasner’s first taste of one of English football’s odder yet full-throated derbies and while the league table suggests a gulf between the two, more recent form points to something tougher to call.
Palace have at least become tough to beat, with just one reverse in the last eight across all competitions, while Brighton have stuttered with only two points from three very winnable games at a time when the opportunity was there to really shake up the chasing pack behind Liverpool.
Brighton appear more vulnerable than at any other time this season and Eze more confident. Could be time for those encouraging signs to really blossom into something more.
Football League game to watch: Norwich v Burnley
A team whose yo-yo has come to rest at the bottom against a team trying to prevent the same thing happening to them. Back-to-back draws against Middlesbrough and Derby have seen Burnley slip slightly off the pace of Sheffield United and Leeds at the top of the table, and the concern will be that the Yorkshire pair currently appear well capable of opening a truly meaningful gap if there are any more slips.
Norwich represent dangerous opponents in that regard due to their sheer unpredictability. In the space of their last four games they’ve won 6-1 and 4-2, lost 3-0 and drawn 0-0. Something will have to give here anyway in a game that pits the division’s best home attack (25 goals scored in just nine games) against its meanest away defence (four conceded in 10).
European game to watch: PSG v Lyon
Paris St-Germain did at least get a Champions League campaign that still threatens utter humiliation back on track with a 3-0 win at RB Salzburg in a vaguely unedifying game that paints bleak pictures of the sport’s future if you think about it for too long, but it came on the back of a pair of Ligue 1 draws that have just opened up the possibility of an actual title race developing with Marseille and Monaco now just five points adrift.
Lyon, the league’s previous dominant force, remain vanishingly unlikely to force their own way into that race sitting a further four points back but would surely love to land a blow on what does appear to currently be a wounded rival.