World Football's Monday Morning Hangover: The Darkness Before the Dawn

Welcome to world football's Monday Morning Hangover, an homage to the NFL section's own Monday Morning Hangover, in which we round up the key stories and important points from the last weekend in world football.

With an inevitable focus on the Premier League, let's get started.

De Gea Can Save Everything but Liverpool's Season

As the dust settles on the latest Battle of Old Trafford, at least Brendan Rodgers can say he went out on his shield.

That is not to say the Liverpool manager will be sacked as a result of Sunday's 3-0 defeat to Manchester United—although we should not rule out the possibility that extra board meetings are being arranged at Anfield as we speak—but simply to point out that in Liverpool's biggest game of the season since their previous biggest game of the season, Rodgers did not shy away from making some bold selections.

For the many criticisms and questions Liverpool fans will have this week, the one thing they cannot accuse Rodgers of is lacking conviction. For Sunday's game, he changed his goalkeeper, switched to a three-at-the-back system and opted to play without a recognised striker until the second half—bold moves to make for a run-of-the-mill Premier League game, let alone one of the most important matches of the season.

If not for an exceptional goalkeeping performance from David de Gea, those changes might have produced a remarkable win—although, once again, that is not to say all the decisions paid off.

Switching the maligned Simon Mignolet out for Brad Jones between the sticks was an eye-catching (and eyebrow-raising) move, but it was not one that paid off for the Northern Irishman. While Jones was not directly at fault for any of the goals, he committed himself absurdly early to both the first and third goals of the game—the sort of eager mistakes made by a goalkeeper short on playing time.

We will never know if Mignolet would have done better with either chance, but he surely could not have done much worse.

The three-at-the-back system, moderately effective when the Reds went down to 10 men against Basel in the Champions League in midweek, had its moments. But it mainly seemed to cede a huge amount of space to United down the flanks, as Alberto Moreno, Joe Allen and Jordan Henderson (basically the whole midfield) struggled to work out when and where they should be covering for each other.

That confusion contributed to Wayne Rooney's opener from Antonio Valencia's measured pass, which set the tone for much of the game.

Liverpool were unlucky for the second goal shortly before half-time—Juan Mata was clearly in an offside position when Robin van Persie's flick was sent his way. But even before then, the Reds had created plenty of chances to get on the scoresheet, only to be denied by the resolute De Gea.

In the first half, it was Raheem Sterling being repelled by the Spaniard. In the second, it was Mario Balotelli. Liverpool fans will wonder how different things might have been had Daniel Sturridge been fit, but it was nevertheless a vast improvement on the truly anaemic attacking efforts against Sunderland and Basel.

The irony is that the result ended up being markedly worse.

Shaun Botterill/Getty Images

Rodgers, who has not shied away from pointing out Sturridge's absence to mitigate recent results, said afterward that team spirit and belief had also been hurt this season. Per the Guardian, he said:

"

We want to recapture the team ethos. We had a team that was growing for a couple of years and has changed with injuries and whatever. It is just that emphasis on the team.

It is pretty clear we are searching to find solutions in the game to get wins. The players are working incredibly hard. There is not a lack of effort. The attitude was first class but, when you are not winning as consistently, the feelings are a little bit different but you want to get wins and concentrate on your performances.

"

For United, like the scoreline and the emotions, the analysis is almost the opposite.

Louis van Gaal threw young James Wilson into the starting line-up for his speed (moderately successful at best), asked Michael Carrick to sit in central defence (hugely important), and then watched as Antonio Valencia and Ashley Young, his wing-backs, had a significant influence on the match.

United barely enjoyed the better of the play but were utterly clinical on the counter-attack, taking full advantage of the wall they had in goal at the other end.

United have now faced all of last season's top four—two at home and two away. When judging things on the flow of the play, they arguably could have lost all four of those meetings. Yet their only loss (1-0) was at Manchester City. United won two and drew the other, yet it would not be unfair to suggest they still haven't put in a truly cohesive team performance against a top side this season.

A 3-0 scoreline against Liverpool would suggest exactly such an event, but the reality was not quite the same.

Though Rodgers and his squad will cling to that as a crumb of comfort while they slip 10 points behind a team they beat by 20 last season, for United, that is a cause for unbridled optimism.

If the Red Devils can pick up such good results without playing well, what exactly is their ceiling? Eight points behind the league leaders, might United be the third horse in the sort of competitive title race few were anticipating as recently as three weeks ago?

"We are always looking at how we can get to the top," Carrick told MUTV (h/t ESPN).

"All in all we are in a pretty decent position at the moment," he continued. "We need to stay up there, we need to stay in touch, then come Christmas and come January, as we've said for many years now, if we are up there challenging then we will give ourselves a great chance."

That is the direction United are looking once again—onwards and upwards. For Liverpool, questions are starting to be asked of Rodgers after a week that saw his team knocked out of the Champions League and then well beaten by one of the club's fiercest rivals. In football, weeks don't get much worse than that.

They say it is always darkest before the dawn. If this is the darkest point for Liverpool—considering the results of the last week, how could it get much worse?—then Rodgers can surely survive it and come back stronger.

If it is to get darker still, however, then perhaps the dawn will only come at Anfield when the Northern Irishman is replaced.

Alex Livesey/Getty Images

Goal of the Weekend

"

Brilliant goal by Isco https://t.co/esPmhkeHsF

— ❤️=⚽️ (@Total_Futbol_) December 13, 2014"

It's questionable whether Isco would even get in the Real Madrid starting line-up if everyone else was fully fit, but the young attacking midfielder has made himself impossible to ignore. Especially with goals like this one.

Goal of the Weekend: Runner-Up Edition

Random Asides

• As Liverpool's loss cut them further adrift in the race for the Champions League places, Spurs' latest late win at Swansea seemed to renew their hopes of challenging for fourth once again. It may seem arbitrary to write off one team and keep alive the hopes of another (Spurs are still only three points ahead of Liverpool, so it could be back to level pegging next week), but the manner of Spurs' results this season—so many late wins, interjected with some disappointing defeats—indicates they have either been lucky so far or they have huge room to grow. Liverpool, who beat Spurs 3-0 at the start of the campaign, will hope that it's the former.

• At the end of the summer transfer window, everything looked optimistic for Hull City. They had signed talented forward Abel Hernandez to lead the line and drafted in Hatem Ben Arfa and Gaston Ramirez to provide some creativity and guile behind the Uruguayan. On paper, Steve Bruce seemed to have fashioned a squad capable of doing some real damage. Wind on a few months, however, and Hernandez has been in and out of the team thanks to complications with his work permit, injuries and family matters, while Ramirez's most notable contribution to date has been a silly red card that changed the game against Spurs. As for Ben Arfa? The Newcastle loanee has been given leave from the club—effectively sent away, considering Bruce happily admitted at the weekend that he did not know where the Frenchman was. He will almost certainly be cut adrift in January. Hull's once promising transfer haul currently looks like a series of expensive mistakes.

• Four successive defeats for Southampton—the latest against lowly Burnley—has seen them plummet down the standings. West Ham, the season's other bright starter, have Leicester City next weekend and face Chelsea and Arsenal before the year is out. Are Sam Allardyce's men next in line to start regressing back to their expected level?

• Arsenal's game with Newcastle on Saturday evening was, in effect, a preview of what was to come the next day at Old Trafford: Two sides, both ravaged by absences, degenerating into a game that offered little tactical discipline but plenty of individual effort and talent. With that being the case, it was no wonder that Arsenal, with their greater array of attacking talent, would emerge victorious—Olivier Giroud particularly glittered with his hold-up play and two goals. Against a better, fully fit team, the Gunners might have been troubled. But on this occasion, Newcastle (down to their third-choice goalkeeper and without Moussa Sissoko and Steven Taylor) were not the team to do it.

• Chelsea's win over Hull City at the weekend saw Jose Mourinho surpass 400 points in the Premier League in just his 174th match in charge, per The Telegraph. That makes the Portuguese the fastest to progress to 400 points of any manager in the competition's history, easily beating Sir Alex Ferguson (191 games) and Arsene Wenger (208).

Good Week, Bad Week

Good Week

Olivier Giroud: Showed what he has to offer as a starter alongside Alexis Sanchez and Danny Welbeck.

Frank Lampard: Surely too valuable to be allowed to leave for New York in January?

David de Gea: An almost perfect display of goalkeeping in what felt like a pivotal game for his side.

Alan Irvine: Midlands derby win removes him from the Sack Race peloton for a little while.

Tom Heaton: Another (former) United goalkeeper who caught the eye in a vital win this weekend.

Rui Vieira/Associated Press

Bad Week

Dusan Tadic: His penalty miss compounded Southampton's current struggles.

Tom Huddlestone: Indiscipline was costly for Hull, who will miss him for the next three games due to a red card.

Kyle Bartley: Dawdling on the ball in the final minutes directly contributed to Spurs' late winner at Swansea.

Raheem Sterling: The frustration of Sunday's loss at Old Trafford was etched on the forward's face at full time. 

Rickie Lambert: Overlooked for a half-fit Mario Balotelli in the second half at Old Trafford. The writing appears to already be on the wall for the striker.

Other Points of Note

Tim Ireland/Associated Press

Wenger the Flavour of the Week Once Again

After Arsenal's 4-1 win over Newcastle United, it was reassuring to hear so many Arsenal fans show their support for Arsene Wenger. They may have hardly been lifted off their feet when Santi Cazorla scored the game's fifth and final goal, but they made clear their affection for the Frenchman.

"I’m grateful for that and I enjoy it," Wenger said, per the club's official website. "But the most important thing is the way we play football and I think [what] is most important is that our fans go home happy because we have played well and won."

After the previous week, when a chastening defeat to Stoke City led to Wenger being booed as he boarded a train back to London, it was both a reminder of the fickle nature of football and the fact that a small group of people should not be taken as representative of a wider fanbase.

Clearly, there remain many issues with Arsenal—the same ones that have persisted at the club for what seems like every season since they last won the Premier League title. Wenger said before the Newcastle game that, if everyone was fit, he did not need to add to his squad. But that is exactly why you have a big squad—because there will always be injuries.

That is why Wenger had to play Mathieu Debuchy at centre-back on Saturday, with Hector Bellerin continuing at right-back. If Newcastle didn't have selection problems of their own, they might have taken advantage of that. But for now at least, Wenger remains back in favour with the Gunners faithful.

Trigger Fingers Could Have Decisive Say At the Wrong End of the Table

We are midway into December now and yet to see a manager sacked in this Premier League season.

Everyone seems happy (or at least moderately satisfied) with the men at the helm, although bottom side Leicester City did make a change last week by sacking director of football Terry Robinson.

This seems to be an emerging theme of modern Premier League football: Sides, often the newly promoted ones, sack directors for poor summer transfer business, rather than the managers who are struggling to get the results on the pitch.

Cardiff did the same last season (although Iain Moody's departure was later shown to have been as a result of other causes), but the worrying thing for Leicester boss Nigel Pearson is that Malky Mackay soon followed his director of football out the door at the Bluebirds last season.

Pearson might be on the hot seat, but arguably so too is every manager in the bottom eight (bar perhaps Roberto Martinez at Everton). Those clubs are all eyeing the relegation battle nervously, and their respective owners will start to think about whether a different manager might achieve different results.

It seems certain someone is going to pull the trigger soon. Who goes and who stays and who is hired and how they fare could decide who goes down and who stays up at the end of the season. For clubs, that could be a £100 million difference—no wonder the various owners and chairmen are being patient.

Michael Steele/Getty Images

Monday Night Football

Everton vs. QPR

It is often said that home form must be the cornerstone of any Premier League survival bid. If that is the case, then QPR should be feeling relatively confident, having won three of their last four games at Loftus Road (drawing the other against champions Manchester City).

Despite that run, however, Harry Redknapp's side remain in the relegation zone thanks to their hideous away form. QPR have lost all seven of their games on the road this term. If such a run continued, they would need to effectively need to win 11 of their 19 home games (and draw a few others) to have a realistic chance of staying in the division.

Before the weekend, Redknapp spoke of his team's need to improve its away form, per The Telegraph:

"

Our home form’s been excellent. I couldn’t be more pleased with how we’ve played. 

Beating Villa, beating Leicester, beating Burnley, drawing with Man City, that’s good. I’d have took 14 points at this stage of the season at the start of year. But we’ve found it difficult away from home. We’re still searching for a formula that can get us points. There has been an improvement away from home, we did well at Chelsea, we were good for spells at Swansea.

But we need to turn that improvement we’ve shown into points. You can’t rely on home advantage to stay in this league.

"

Everton would seem to give Redknapp that opportunity. The Toffees have tended to struggle in the league games immediately following Europa League involvement (as they are doing this week, albeit after a meaningless home loss to Kuban Krasnodar).

But Roberto Martinez is also determined to see his team finally embark on a run of consistent form to push up the league table—a win would elevate them into the top 10, from where they can start thinking about building a bid for the European places.

With QPR missing Charlie Austin, their main source of goals, they may be left lacking the firepower to counter Romelu Lukaku and Samuel Eto'o—the Cameroonian's guile and game intelligence will surely allow the Belgian to go on an extended goalscoring run at some point.

QPR's away struggles could be set to continue for a little longer yet.

Prediction: Everton 3-1 QPR