The Warm-Up: Poch taken down a notch, Pogba towers above the rest, Pulis is out of time

Updated 20/11/2017 at 07:56 GMT

Adam Hurrey reviews the hits and the (glaring, six-yard) misses of the footballing weekend that was...

Tottenham's Jan Vertonghen looks dejected

Image credit: Reuters

MONDAY’S BIG STORIES

Arsenal turn the screw on Pochettino’s big-game pedigree

It’s a statistic that seems likely to loom over Mauricio Pochettino for a while yet. It also demonstrates that crashing the perennial-title-contender party is one thing; making it your own party requires something else entirely.

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Zidane on verge of becoming new Bayern boss - Paper Round

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Tottenham’s squad arrived for the derby looking stretched and strained, and that’s how it panned out. Harry Kane was deemed in the post mortem of their 2-0 defeat to Arsenal as looking far from fit (his gait makes it harder to tell than with most players), Dele Alli’s form is now firmly in a rut, and Moussa Sissoko has no place in the heart of a title challenger’s midfield. With Danny Rose spending his afternoon training with the stiffs, Spurs were blown away in rather surprising fashion by their distinctly pumped-up neighbours.

The tireless Alexis Sanchez had to be dug out of the Emirates turf at the end (one head-first dive in vain to prevent a throw-in was adequate proof of his keenness) and even Mesut Ozil earned himself a Match of the Day montage for his chasing and tackling back.

Pochettino chose to reflect on refereeing decisions that had gone against his team – suggesting that Spurs have, at least, developed the top-four habit of permanent raging injustice – but that nagging record will occupy his mind.

Next month, Spurs go to Man City with a growing perception to try and debunk.

Coleman seduced by dream of turning Sunderland around

Wales manager Chris Coleman looks on before the International match between Wales and Panama at Cardiff City Stadium on November 14, 2017 in Cardiff, Wales.

Image credit: Getty Images

If you’re committed you’re in, if not you’re out. You can’t pretend at it. What we don’t need are any shrinking violets. We will find out who is going to be coming along on this next chapter pretty quickly I think. Whoever is not will need to go and play football somewhere else.

Chris Coleman has a PhD in managerial tough-talking. Before he even took charge of a Sunderland game, the new manager – their ninth in six years – was issuing some ultimatums to his new squad, some of whom could become £60,000-a-week League One players unless a collective upsurge can be teased out of them.

There are no guarantees – not at the Stadium of Light, and certainly not in the transition from international football to twice-weekly domestic chaos – but Coleman at least comes into the job fresh and ready for the challenge.

Paul Pogba makes everyone else look inadequate

Paul Pogba.

Image credit: Eurosport

There was the original #PogBack; the carefully stage-managed return of the one that had got away, and supposedly the man who would carry Manchester United straight back to where they belonged.

His third coming, though – a return from nine weeks out with a hamstring injury – arguably made the biggest statement of all. He’d missed a timid draw at Liverpool and two defeats: an embarrassing one at Huddersfield and a toothless one at Chelsea. United’s autumn had been defined by a lack of midfield authority, with nobody around to take charge of a game.

And that’s what Pogba invariably does. Not in the snarling, rampaging way Roy Keane once did at Old Trafford, but with a swagger. Not just a swagger, in fact, but a flagrant disregard for whoever is in front of him.

You could see it with every touch against Newcastle; he immediately looked beyond his immediate opponent, as if they didn’t exist, and looked to get United on the front foot. Even when he isn’t going forward – his effortless shift past Jacob Murphy before crossing for Martial’s equaliser was sublime – Pogba is holding the ball out of reach like a towering schoolboy refusing to give someone’s bag back.

No matter the significance of his return to United’s title challenge; for the neutral, it just made them a lot more pleasurable to watch.

IN OTHER NEWS

It’s not often a miss gets the sort of extended, satisfied cheer that usually greets the fourth goal in a 4-0 demolition, but Brentford’s Neal Maupay’s miss against Cardiff simply wasn’t something that happens very often.

Misses should be wayward, careless affairs. If anything, Clive, he’s put almost too much thought into this:

Maupay found little sympathy from opposing manager Neil Warnock, surprisingly enough.

“I can’t blame anybody but the lad himself for that miss,” Warnock harrumphed. “I have no sympathy at all, he’s tried to be clever and give someone the eye rather than put it in.”

HEROES AND ZEROS

Hero: Daniel Dubidat

“To be fair I had a stinker for most of the game, so to score that was a massive relief. I was getting stick from the gaffer who takes no prisoners, if someone is not playing well, he will tell them and I hold my hands up.”

FIFA’s Puskas Award has cultivated a democratic reputation when it comes to recognising wondergoal-scorers from footballing backwaters, so it’s not an exaggeration to say that Daniel Dubidat, of Evo-Stik South outfit Alvechurch, has a decent chance of making the next shortlist.

When a dipping 20-yard volley is only the third-best touch of the ball, you know something special has happened.

Zero: Tony Pulis

Tony Pulis the head coach / manager of West Bromwich Albion

Image credit: Getty Images

“If there was a club that was struggling, and he was out of a job, they’d probably turn to him to try and keep them in the Premier League!”

Alan Shearer summed up West Brom’s growing predicament rather neatly on Match of the Day on Saturday night. Tony Pulis will take his blunt tool of a team to Wembley next weekend and, if the habit of their last 11 games continues, he and they will be without a win for three whole months.

The numbers make painful enough reading: West Brom are averaging the smallest share of possession per game (36.76%) and have hit the target less often than everyone bar Swansea. Throw in some (suitably enough) highly defensive words from Pulis in the match programme – before Chelsea strolled round, browsed the goods, and left with a 4-0 victory – and a visit from the club’s Chinese owner Guochuan Lai, and it all spells trouble.

Pulis could muster only some whatever-will-be-will-be sentiment in his post-match press conference. Sacking season is well under way, and the most unfashionable piece of Premier League furniture might be about to be freecycled.

HAT TIP

…it is tempting to call Fifa’s continuing corruption debacle a gift that just keeps on giving. Except it fees like something else by now, a gift that has, frankly, given too much, but which still keeps on dishing up its shovel-loads of corruption and human weakness. This is the other thing about the World Cup. It isn’t only the money now. It’s the horror and the death too.

The Guardian’sBarney Ronaycuts to the chase on what now feels like an eternity of FIFA disgrace, as the US justice department court case continues in New York.

RETRO CORNER

On this very day in 1985: Belgium travel to Rotterdam to face Holland, leading 1-0 on aggregate, to decide who would take one of the last remaining spots at the World Cup in Mexico the following summer.

The Dutch scored twice to move within five minutes of the promised land, only for Georges Grün to belt home a header for Belgium. Scenes.