An absolutely cracking set of midweek Premier League fixtures to enjoy this week, with several games looking well worth your time and a schedule that offers potential to see at least bits and pieces of all of them.
Game to watch: Tottenham v Man City
Look, the (relatively) boring/correct answer is probably Liverpool v Newcastle, but we’re not about to advise any neutral to dodge the guaranteed nonsense that comes with a Spurs-Man City encounter.
The only certainty in any game between these two is that nothing is certain, and this one is even less certain than normal. Which is very uncertain indeed.
Spurs have got themselves out of what appeared to be a growing relegation pickle with three straight league wins, while Man City are still the team we’ve had to try and come to understand this season; thrashing Newcastle one week, folding meekly to Liverpool the next.
And that Spurs run only makes us even less certain of what comes next. Had they lost at Ipswich at the weekend, as narrative surely demanded they should, then we’d be extremely confident they would now beat City.
Even at their all-conquering best, City had an infamous and inexplicable weak spot when it came to Spurs and it’s never really mattered that much whether Spurs were any good or not at the time, or even who the manager was.
Spurs have already beaten City twice this season and are gunning for a sixth win out of six against the Manchester clubs this season. Given where Spurs’ own season is, you have to concede that’s quite funny.
Oh, and if for some reason you aren’t irresistibly fascinated by what precise concoction these two have got in store for us, then remember that this is a TNT takeover week with all games live and thus you can deploy what we like to call The Amazon System anyway.
On Wednesday night, that means the following (assuming of course that your own team isn’t also playing): At 7.30pm, you settle in for the first half of Spurs v City before switching over at half-time for the early stages of Liverpool v Newcastle.
Fifteen minutes into that one you’ve got a decision to make and here we can only advise to go with your heart. Either way, when it’s half-time at Anfield you’re back for the final stages of Spurs-City before getting back to the conclusion of Liverpool-Newcastle.
We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again. It’s mad that we put up with not having this option for close to 30 years of pay TV, and mad that we still consider it a lovely occasional treat rather than something we should get all the bloody time for what we fork out.
READ: Premier League winners and losers: Liverpool (and Newcastle, and Villa, and Spurs) enjoy
Player to watch: Mo Salah
Sometimes we try to be interesting here, and sometimes we’re running out of time at the end of a long day, okay?
There is one player with more than 20 Premier League goals this season, and one player with more than 15 Premier League assists this season, and Mo Salah is both of those players.
He is currently six clear of his nearest challengers in both golden boot and playmaker awards this season, in a team that is 11 points clear at the top of the table. It’s a pretty good season.
And Newcastle are just one of the many, many teams Salah seems to enjoy playing. He’s got 17 Premier League goal involvements against them (10 goals, seven assists); only against Man United has he managed more.
Here are all his ridiculous stats.
Team to watch: Manchester United
A full TV programme of midweek loveliness obviously leaves us spoiled for choice here, but we’re going to look here for the option with greatest chance of hilarity.
All credit to Chelsea for being so bad recently that their home game with Southampton comes into contention here, but it’s surely impossible to resist the charms of Manchester United against Ipswich in the catastrophe potential stakes here.
For one thing, Ipswich have proof of concept when it comes to rocking up at a pratfalling Big Six club and pulling their pants down having won at Spurs earlier in the season, and they got a deserved point against United earlier in the season at Portman Road in Ruben Amorim’s first game in charge when he hadn’t realised at all what he’d let himself in for and may have quite reasonably have believed that a post-match interview being gatecrashed by Ed Sheeran was as bad as it would get.
Ipswich’s own form is deeply forlorn, but this might represent their last chance to turn the relegation fight into something meaningful. Especially if Wolves have beaten Fulham 24 hours earlier.
Manager to watch: Mikel Arteta
So… what now? It’s not exactly his fault that he was left short in January, and he’s been clear about his frustrations.
But this is the hand he’s been dealt and he’s going to have to come up with a solution of some kind or other and, to the collective disappointment of a weary nation, it does look like Merino Fellaini might be a thing that only works against Leicester.
He can’t just shrug and give up, though. He’s got to come up with something more compelling than ‘Wait for Bukayo Saka and Gabriel Martinelli to come back’. The lack of threat Arsenal posed against West Ham at the weekend was stark, and it only feels like the very slightest of exaggerations to note that a defeat at Forest would leave Arsenal in a position of looking nervously down rather than hopefully up.
The good news for Arsenal, and it does feel like they could do with some, is that this doesn’t seem to be the worst time to run into a Forest side that has been teak tough for most of the season but has suddenly leaked 11 goals – a third of their overall total for the season – during a run of three defeats in four games.
The other game in that run was a 7-0 win, but don’t worry about that right now. The point is that Arsenal and Arteta are running into a team that are currently there to be got at if the Gunners can just find a way.
Football League game to watch: Bromley v Bradford
Bradford are one of a trio of League Two clubs along with AFC Wimbledon and Notts County on 57 points from 32 games in and around the automatic promotion places. While Walsall appear to be heading over the horizon and into the promised land of League One, the battle for the remaining automatic spots is hotting up nicely.
Throw second-placed Doncaster (58 points from 33) and sixth-placed Port Vale (55 from 31) in with our 57 varieties and you’ve got yourself a compelling promotion battle that none of them appear capable of truly grabbing by the scruff of the neck and putting to bed early.
And the Football League’s newest club, Bromley, still have possibilities of their own with a three-game winning run keeping them in sight of a play-off spot in their first ever season of league football.
European game to watch: Barcelona v Atletico Madrid
Plenty of lovely cup action to get into around the continent this week, but hard to beat this Copa del Rey semi-final first leg between two of the three teams currently separated by a mere point after 25 games of a La Liga title fight for the ages.
The Copa del Rey undeniably features some way down the list of priorities for a pair of teams who also have Champions League last-16 ties to prepare for, with Atleti in particular facing a daunting upcoming fixture list.
Between this week’s first leg against Barcelona and the second they will play fourth-placed Athletic Bilbao as well as Barcelona in La Liga to go with both legs of that Champions League scrap with local rivals Real Madrid.
