The Warm-Up: Jesus rises, but sacking Claudio Ranieri would prove football is beyond redemption

After a stuttering midweek, in which only one of the top nine managed to muster three points, the upper reaches of the Premier League came roaring backwith a couple of very notable exceptions.

Chelsea’s latest encounter with Arsenal was billed heavily as a revenge mission for September’s 3-0 defeat at the Emirates, now since credited as the straw that broke the camel’s tactical back for Antonio Conte who switched his side to the 3-4-3 system for which very few have found an answer since. In the end, it became the latest rather sad indication of how far the Gunners remain from sustaining the characteristics – physical and mental – required for a title challenge.

Also learning a chastening lesson about their own limitations this weekend were Jurgen Klopp’s Liverpool. A 2-0 defeat at Hull – all final-third huffing and puffing before their flimsy defence gave way at the other end – extended their miserable 2017 run: 10 games, one win, five defeats, just eight goals scored.

Despite Tottenham preserving their long unbeaten run and the unreadable Manchester City salvaging a win over Swansea at the death, surely only Chelsea have the right blend of durability, unity, magic and fortune (not to mention their lighter workload from now on in) to secure the title.

If the title race picture is becoming clearer by the week, the other end of the Premier League table is a soupy fog. Hull’s surprise win – showcasing Marco Silva’s evident ability to organise a team for that very job – was matched for sheer shock value by Sunderland’s 4-0 crushing of Crystal Palace within the first half at Selhurst Park. Those results compressed the bottom three to just a single point.

Only one point better off were Middlesbrough – whose defensive resilience wasn’t quite enough at White Hart Lane – and the disparate pair of Swansea (improving) and Leicester (imploding), neither of whom could pull themselves away from the mire.

Six teams are starting to sweat within the narrow space of just two points from 15th to 20th. Throw in the fresh ideas and new faces of Silva and Paul Clement, and we have an intriguing four months at the wrong end of the table.

It’s official: stadium bars with an up-close-and-personal view of the players’ tunnel are now A Thing. Tottenham pre-emptively kicked off the trend in their recently-released design plans for their new White Hart Lane home – complete with a “cheese room”, of course – by promising premium ticket-holders the chance to witness midfielders snorting phlegm out their nostrils and earnest goalkeepers urging their teammates to “f***ing start early, yeah?”

Inevitably – if rather too quickly – this new phenomenon has already trickled down to non-league. Gary Neville shared images of Salford City’s new venture:

Lots to enjoy here. The dystopian cybersex dungeon vibe, the lonesome Matrix stunt double in the middle of the scene, and the lingering question of what the players themselves feel about this latest footballing fad.

Sorry for starting on a cynical note – and so soon after the window closed too – but there’s a summer transfer saga in the pipeline. With Chelsea presumably weighing up their post-Costa options for when that old chestnut presents itself again at the end of the season, there appears to be a standout candidate to take a place at the point of their electric attack.

Romelu Lukaku, thanks to his four-goal haul in the evisceration of Bournemouth, is the top flight’s new top scorer with 16 goals. That’s the tip of his statistical iceberg, though. He’s scored or set up no fewer than 47 goals since the start of last season. His shooting accuracy is better than Costa, Harry Kane, Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Sergio Aguero and Alexis Sanchez. He’s knocking on the door of Duncan Ferguson’s record of Premier League goals for Everton.

He’s also still – still – just 23 years old.

Of his four goals, his first was the most vivid sign of a striker who believes he can score at will. Just 30 seconds had elapsed at Goodison Park when he controlled the ball and swept it emphatically into the far corner almost in one motion. That was a finish that belongs in end-of-season montages and, perhaps more importantly, in a Champions League-bound team.

If this looks like a convenient, if clumsy, attempt to shoehorn some words of praise for Gabriel Jesus into your Monday Warm-Up…that’s exactly what this is. Let’s start with Aguero, though.

Benched for a second successive game – a previously unthinkable state of affairs – Aguero faced some inevitable questions about his Manchester City future after the late win over Swansea.

Aguero’s response was precisely what his manager would expect, but his omission from the team owed less to a waning of his considerable powers than simply the instant impact of City’s 19-year-old Brazilian. A frontline of Gabriel, Raheem Sterling and Leroy Sane (average age: 20 and a bit) is brimming with theoretical promise, interchangeability and sheer, unadulterated pace.

The temptation for anyone yet to have seen the slightly-built Gabriel perform is to assume that fleetness of foot is his main weapon. In fact – and for a teenager just three games into his new career at an elite club on a new continent, this is mightly impressive – it’s his composure that stands out.

Original-thinker headline writers: you appear to have your work cut out.

The Guardian’sRob Smyth, master of the minute-by-minute preamble and occasionally of this parish, with a typically (and acceptably) romantic view of Leicester’s post-title malaise.

On this very day in 1980, England – in their worst kit of all time – beat the Republic of Ireland 2-0. Both goals came via the irrepressible Kevin Keegan, the second of which is well worth a few seconds of your Monday morning…

Nothing much, apart from the positively exotic-sounding La Liga prospect of Granada vs Las Palmas. I don’t know, read a book or something.