Big Weekend: Man United v Aston Villa, Regis Le Bris, Tottenham, Bradley Barcola

There’s no obvious big standout headliner for the final Premier League weekend before the international break, but don’t be fooled into thinking it might not be Big.

All the Weekends are Big anyway, but this one is definitely Big, because there are very tasty morsels everywhere you look on matchday 10.

Game to watch: Manchester United v Aston Villa

So… what if Manchester United win this one? It would be enormously and pathetically Manchester United of them to win this narrative-heavy match that pits the manager they’ve saddled themselves with against the one they covet but cannot have because Unai Emery is cursed with neither United DNA nor idiocy.

But seriously, do United have a plan in place for a home win in this one? It is technically possible. United have pulled something out of their arse before now against Villa many times – notably when denying them Champions League football on the final day of the 24/25 season.

Are they just going to rumble on with Carrick in charge until the next run of miserable results comes along, in the vague hope that by then they’ve all agreed on who should be the replacement? Will they still sack him anyway having reached the last natural break that allows time to make such a move before March when it might all be too late?

It becomes a question of framing then. A Manchester United manager with two wins in 11 and mired in the bottom half of the table can have no complaints about getting the boot, but Carrick would also be a manager with two wins from two. United have muddled themselves into a position where the most straightforward decision imaginable could become hard to justify. And this is not the first time they’ve allowed a manager to muddle forlornly on long past the point of inevitability. It’s not even the first time they’ve done it this year, technically.

United can probably count themselves fortunate that the only three teams currently below them in the table face Man City, Liverpool and Chelsea this weekend. That significantly reduces the otherwise very real prospect that United might kick this game off while sat inside the bottom three.

Despite the ludicrous comeback against Roma, Carrick’s short-term prospects do still probably rest on this game. Fail to win, and it remains incredibly hard to see even the United brains trust spending two weeks tripping over each other and failing to sack a manager who would by that stage have gone eight Premier League games without a win.

The most interesting outcome is perhaps therefore a United win. Just to see what they do with that information.

Manager to watch: Regis Le Bris

With Michael Carrick’s demise delayed by Man United’s dithering and absurd if surely misleading Champions League comebacks, the Sack Race is suddenly once more a live heat with multiple contenders.

And uncomfortably close to the top of that list of contenders one now finds the man whose first-season overachievement with Sunderland has given way to a nasty dose of second-season syndrome.

It still doesn’t really exist, by the way. There have been 24 second seasons for Premier League clubs in the last 15 years and only four of them have ended in relegation. And only in the case of Sheffield United, ninth in 2020 and relegated in 2021, has second-season syndrome been a readily identifiable cause. The other three were crap but just about survived and were then crap but didn’t.

Leeds narrowly avoided doing a Sheffield United post-Bielsa and then suffered third-season syndrome because they just have to be different, don’t they? But generally, if you get promoted and have a really good first season in the Premier League there is little precedent to fall flat on your face the next.

Yet Le Bris and his side are currently lurching from one pratfall to the next, showing almost none of the vim or vigour that made them such effective disruptors last time out. Unless they can get at least a point and most likely three against Chelsea on Sunday, they will spend the November international break bottom of the table. That’s not a good combination for any manager.

And there is the very real prospect now that this is only the start of a grim winter for Sunderland. The Europa League defeat to Dinamo Zagreb was very limp, and theirs appears to be a squad entirely unprepared physically or mentally for the rigours of two-games-a-week football.

There’s a certain laughable quality to the fact that this weekend they face Chelsea, far more built for such stresses but able instead to luxuriate in a one-a-week schedule thanks to their own ongoing incompetence.

Once the interlull is over, Sunderland face a gruelling run of nine games in 30 days even before the Traditional Busy Christmas Period begins, a run that includes huge Premier League clashes with Villa, Tottenham, Liverpool and Newcastle before potential six-pointers against Forest and Palace while also having to cram in Europa League games against Jagiellonia and Milan, and a Carabao game that means they’ll face Palace twice in four days just before Christmas which we’re certain absolutely nobody wants.

The big question now is not just what kind of state Sunderland might be in by the time the crackers are pulled, but how much of it Le Bris will be around to see.

Team to watch: Tottenham

So are they actually good now or what? The dreary but surely correct assessment is that they were never truly quite as bad as six games without a win at the start of the season suggested, but also probably not quite as good as three wins on the spin since then hints at either.

They still lack a killer instinct in front of goal that is going to cost them a lot of points in a lot of games. But there’s little doubt about the fact they are now at the very, very least really quite competent and getting to grips at last with the shapes and patterns and demands of De Zerbi’s football.

We saw at Brighton that this can be a lengthy process – one De Zerbi very pointedly and astutely didn’t even attempt to begin during the desperate-times-and-desperate-measures calamity he first walked in on last season – but that when the penny drops it can very quickly become incredibly effective.

Also helps when you finally pick your two very expensive central midfielders who complement each other perfectly to play together in central midfield, with the surprise outcome that they complement each other perfectly in central midfield.

Since Tonandes (is that any less sh*t than Fernali? Not sure) was first deployed as a double pivot at Stamford Bridge two games ago, Spurs have enjoyed 33 per cent of their Premier League wins and 29 per cent of their Premier League clean sheets in 2026, as well as 50 per cent of their Premier League wins at Stamford Bridge ever. We would contend that is not coincidence.

Rodrigo Bentancur returns from suspension for the trip to Leeds, but with Spurs now largely a one-game-a-week team this season it seems foolish to mess with what is now clearly working. After Leeds and the interlull, Spurs face Ipswich, Sunderland and Fulham before the North London Derby.

We’re not saying they’ll take it, because they are still Spurs, but there’s no denying that a significant opportunity is there now for a team who were bottom a month ago but would, for a short while at least, jump to a giddy fifth in the table with victory this weekend.

They won’t get that victory, mind you, because it requites the overcoming of all manner of long-established Spurs curses. The curse of opportunity, as discussed, the curse of the last game before the international break, and above all else the curse of the first outing for what we can already just tell deep in our bones is a profoundly cursed purple third kit.

Player to watch: Bradley Barcola

And Florian Wirtz, and the rest of Liverpool’s creative sorts. It’s no secret that Liverpool’s main problem this season – apart from the biased and corrupt officials determined to keep them down for mysterious reasons, of course – has been a curious struggle to create clear-cut chances despite having all manner of players who should be really rather good at it.

Only Coventry have created fewer Big Chances in the Premier League this season than Liverpool’s 12, the most recent of which was headed wastefully over the bar by Alexis Mac Allister late in the first half of the controversial 1-0 defeat to Arsenal last weekend.

But at least ‘It was Arsenal’ offers some meaningful mitigation for the struggle to create clear openings last weekend. They are good at this. This weekend Liverpool face Crystal Palace. Who are not good at this. They are in fact the worst at this, having conceded more goals than anyone else this season and, encouragingly for Liverpool’s assorted struggling creative types, allowed 31 Big Chances in their nine games this season. That’s the same number as Ipswich, and more than everyone else.

Football League game to watch: Portsmouth v Stoke

A Premier League fixture as recently as 2010, a year which we are once again shocked and appalled to discover is not in fact all that recent. But both these sides are having a go at getting back to the Premier League in a typically chaotic and wide-open Championship season.

You’ve got two of the form teams in the league here, having both put sticky starts behind them. Stoke lost their first three games but have won eight of 11 since then to climb into the top four.

Portsmouth, for their part, have won four and drawn two of their six games since losing El Clasicoast and would move within a point of Stoke with victory here.

European game to watch: Atletico Madrid v Barcelona

Second host first in La Liga and if Barcelona come unstuck against a second Madrid team in quick succession the title race is on like Donkey Kong.

If Real Madrid have beaten Valencia on Saturday, then an Atleti win over Barca would leave Spain’s big three separated by a single point heading into the international break.