Big Weekend: Aston Villa v Man Utd, Ten Hag’s last dance, Palace, Johnson, Real Madrid

Could Sunday really be Erik ten Hag’s final game as Manchester United manager? It’s starting to feel like it might have tipped over from possible to probable; there’s surely no way he can survive another Premier League defeat at the hands of a supposed direct rival.

Game to watch: Aston Villa v Manchester United
Breaking all the long-established rules of Big Weekend here by double-dipping on one game. Don’t want to do any spoilers here, but we’ll give you one guess as to who the manager to watch might be. Yes, that’s right it’s Unai Emery, isn’t it? Has to be.

Look, there are some other interesting games on this weekend, but even without the cracked-badge, crisis-club, Erik ten Hag’s Last Stand narrative swirling all around the place this would be the clear standout.

Yeah, Brighton v Spurs may well be a fun game to watch but it doesn’t quite feel like a game that, whatever happens, might have a truly major impact on the way the whole Barclays might pan out this season. Those two are going to finish somewhere between fifth and ninth, probably, with Spurs probably the higher of the two.

Elsewhere you’ve got Liverpool going to Palace and very probably collecting another win for Arne Slot against a struggling team to leave us not really any the wiser about whether they’re merely a very good team beating teams they ought to beat or a genuine contender that just hasn’t been battle-tested yet against a meaningful rival.

And the other TV game is Everton v Newcastle, which is much less interesting now the Toffees have a win under their belt. Sorry if that offends.

So of course it’s Villa v Man United. How could it not be? You’ve got the biggest club in the land in the very depths of despair, seeing no future under the current manager and having seemingly forgotten collectively and individually what ‘defending’ actually is. The number of times Spurs were able to carve them open last weekend was truly alarming, and it was only down to a combination of Andre Onana and wasteful finishing that United got away with conceding only three goals.

And you can replace the words ‘Spurs’ and ‘last weekend’ with ‘Porto’ and ‘on Thursday’ there as well for what might have been an even more alarming performance if you can imagine such a thing. So absurdly bad was United’s defensive effort against Spurs that it was tempting to simply write it off as a freakish, never-to-be-repeated one-off disasterclass where everything just fell to pieces.

That the exact same thing happened in the exact same way – right down to what is now apparently a recurring gag in the slapstick United sitcom of Bruno Fernandes being slightly harshly sent off – four days later hints at this being what they actually now are.

If they couldn’t find a solution in the four days between those two games, we’re not sure how they do so in another two before heading to Villa Park to face a side absolutely buzzing after taking down Bayern Actual Munich in the Champions League the night before United’s latest defensive calamity.

This is, of course, all relatively new for Villa. This is a huge game for them as well, a test of their ability to regroup and refocus after a monumental European night under lights and get back to the nitty gritty of beating mid-table Premier League teams to ensure they get the chance to do it all again next season.

Villa have been great value again this season and it really is hard to think of a better time to play Man United than after you’ve just beaten a European powerhouse and they’ve stumbled blindly through a couple of games in which they have genuinely been absurdly fortunate to concede only six goals.

Just be thankful we haven’t also made Jhon Duran our player to watch, frankly. We simply cannot wait for the hat-trick he’s going to score after coming on in the 73rd minute.

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Manager to watch: Erik ten Hag
And with that will surely come the end of the Erik ten Hag Era at Manchester United. He’s teetered on the precipice before and survived, but never before has it felt so much a case of ‘when’ not ‘if’ for the beleaguered United boss.

He has started talking in that desperate way that doomed managers do, flailing desperately for positives and finding only slightly smaller negatives to cling to. We’re not sure any struggling manager is going to get themselves out of trouble with the ‘Look it’s only a couple of weeks since we were claiming a brave draw at winless Crystal Palace’ spiel Ten Hag attempted before the Porto game, and we’re damn sure it won’t work for a Manchester United manager.

United were beyond fortunate to escape with a point from Portugal in the Europa League, but not even Harry Maguire’s big brilliant corner-converting head can hide the paucity of the overall performance in a game where Marcus Rashford and Rasmus Hojlund had given them such a dream start.

That the defence still appeared to be barely on speaking terms and that yet again only Onana prevented a greater humiliation is a shocking indictment on the manager. There is a loud section of United fans who view this as the players getting another manager the boot, and it’s a reasonable one. The players must take some responsibility for their own shambling efforts.

But it doesn’t sit quite right this time. Not like it did for Mourinho and Solskjaer and even Rangnick. There it felt like the players who were the common denominator. Now there are really quite a lot of new players even compared to last season, and yet United are bad in all the same ways. The only difference is that, if anything, they’re even worse.

The common denominator is no longer the players but the manager. His decision-making on Thursday night was baffling. Maguire heading home an injury-time corner cannot mask the strangeness of the choice Ten Hag made when, with 15 minutes left to save the game and perhaps his United career, he decided to use his final two substitutions to replace his two starting centre-backs with… another pair of centre-backs.

More puzzling still was the decision to hook Rashford at half-time. Comfortably United’s brightest player in the first half, Rashford scored the first and was heavily involved in the second. Every dangerous break United had even as their lead was disintegrating before their eyes came from Rashford’s running down the left.

When he failed to appear for the second half, we assumed an injury. Ten Hag’s confirmation afterwards that he felt Alejandro Garnacho needed some minutes so Rashford had to make way just felt like yet another nail in a coffin already nailed down tight. What is this future you are resting Rashford for, Erik? There is no future. Not for you.

Ten Hag is circling the drain, seemingly both in denial about his chances of remaining employed beyond Monday morning and yet also grasping desperately at the very tiniest of straws to justify himself.

We may have reached the stage now where it would seem a bigger surprise if Villa isn’t his final game as Manchester United manager.

READ NEXT: Premier League sack race: Man Utd boss Ten Hag on borrowed time after Spurs, Porto shambles

Team to watch: Crystal Palace
A timely fillip, though, for Crystal Palace, to learn just how highly Ten Hag rates his brave team’s effort in going to Selhurst Park and emerging with a plucky point. Timely because it remains one of only three points Oliver Glasner’s winless side have secured this season.

Defeat at Everton last time out left them in the bottom three and one of five teams still without a win. Given that three of those winless teams are the promoted trio and the other is a Wolves side that had its guts ripped out in the summer, it would be a troubling state of affairs even without the fact that Palace and Glasner really did appear to be on to such a good thing at the back end of last season.

Now they welcome a Liverpool side that, thanks to the quirks of the fixture computer, has spent the early days of Arne Slot’s reign dishing out beatings to far weaker Premier League sides such as Wolves and Ipswich and Manchester United.

If Palace are, as seems likely, added to that list then they will have two weeks to stew on a horrible start and the previously unthinkable idea of pressure starting to mount on Glasner and whether he might be a genuine contender to be, let’s be real about it, the second Premier League manager out of a job this season

Player to watch: Brennan Johnson
That’s now five goals in five consecutive wins since ditching the socials, making the Wales winger surely the most compelling reason to get offline since Elon Musk himself.

Those five goals across three competitions – two in the Premier League, two in the Europa League, one in the Carabao – have all been significant, too. There’s no flab here. The late winner at Coventry was a huge mood-changer at the club, he gave Spurs the lead against Brentford, Qarabag and Manchester United, while Spurs always looked like they needed his second goal at Ferencvaros, and so it proved.

He has in those five games doubled the goal tally from his first 38 Tottenham games, and it really does feel like something might have clicked for a player whose attributes are obvious but hadn’t previously included ‘final ball’. Even more revealing than his goal when stepping off the bench in Hungary on Thursday night as a late substitute was his first effort on goal, a fizzing first-time strike from the corner of the area that rattled the crossbar having left the keeper standing.

There was just so much certainty and confidence about the decision-making there in a player who has often been found lacking in that regard since making the step up to Spurs. It remains to be seen if this is just a freakish outlier of a run or the start of something more significant, but there is sufficient and mounting evidence to indicate it really could be the latter.

That would be hugely exciting, but also hugely necessary for a Spurs team that is already negotiating the post-Harry Kane world while also making increasingly necessary preparations for a post-Heung-min Son future that has never appeared more imminent.

Johnson was always a key part of that future, but his current form alongside that of Dominic Solanke and Dejan Kulusevski is bringing that brave new world ever closer.

Son and Kane were the watchwords of the Spurs attack for so very long, but nothing lasts forever and a Spurs side that has entirely reshaped its defence and midfield over the last 18 months finally looks ready to complete the job with its frontline.

Football League game to watch: Burnley v Preston
A Lancashire derby that provides Burnley, who go into the weekend’s fixtures in second place, a Saturday lunchtime chance to make a swift response to whatever current table-toppers Sunderland have produced against another promotion hopeful in Leeds on Friday night.

Burnley are unbeaten in the Championship since an August defeat at Sunderland, but haven’t been entirely convincing in a friendly-looking recent run of games, winning narrowly against Portsmouth and Plymouth either side of a goalless draw at Oxford.

Preston will make the short trip with confidence renewed by a 3-0 win over Watford in midweek, but still sit just a point and a place above the relegation zone in the early table.

European game to watch: Real Madrid v Villarreal
Second plays third in La Liga, with both sides looking to capitalise on Barcelona’s surprise slip-up at Osasuna last weekend.

How confident Real feel about doing so is up for debate, however. They could only draw with 10-man Atletico in the Madrid derby last weekend before suffering a shock Champions League defeat at Lille in midweek.

They currently find themselves in an undeniably amusing mid-table cluster in the new league format, sitting 17th in the standings just behind Barcelona and Bayern Munich. They are of course in no danger of elimination from the Champions League, it’s been designed that way, but it was another chastening night for a side that hasn’t really quite clicked yet this season and is unlikely to find things easy against a Villarreal side whose only defeat came against Barcelona.

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