The Warm-Up: Mourinho vs The Numbers, Josh Sims shines and Jamie Vardy flounders

David Moyes, Louis van Gaal and now Jose Mourinho are keeping the historical statisticians in business. After every final whistle at Old Trafford these days, you can’t seem to move for carefully-curated tweets comparing United’s current run of form with a similar malaise from the last 30 years or so.

A fourth draw in a row at home – this current United side can’t even rouse themselves to implode properly, let alone canter to a victory – left them 11 points behind leaders Chelsea but, more worryingly, eight points adrift of a solid-looking Arsenal in fourth.

There were both mitigating circumstances and some reasons to be optimistic – his defence has been decimated by injury and Paul Pogba is beginning to take games by the scruff of the neck – but the overwhelming impression of United this season is a team still searching for a clear identity. While Chelsea, Liverpool and Manchester City are already displaying the fruits of their managers’ considerable labour, Mourinho and his patchwork side are simply labouring.

Referee Jonathan Moss’s decision to send the scowling Portuguese to the stands – for taking out his frustration at Pogba’s booking on the most common technical-area victim, a nearby water bottle – was a slightly hasty one, but it was a clear case of Mourinho’s reputation preceding him. Frustrated, peripheral and now stuck in a rut – perhaps Manchester United are the personification of their manager after all.

Cheap as it is to boil football down to such dichotomous levels, it’s rather hard to ignore the fact that Chelsea are 17 points better off than at the same stage of last season under Jose Mourinho, while Manchester United are seven short. On Saturday, they made it seven wins from seven in the Premier League, despite conceding their first goal in ten hours of football.

The clean, quiet removal of Cesc Fabregas from Chelsea’s painfully pedestrian midfield – admittedly enabled by the £32m capture of the outrageously effective N’Golo Kante – is just one of the near-instant acts of corrective surgery that Antonio Conte has performed on his team after their miserable title defence last season.

Add to that a unerringly focused Diego Costa (the top flight’s joint-top scorer with 10 s0 far), a reactivated Eden Hazard now freed from his defensive chores, the startling adaptation of Victor Moses to his wing-back role and a reined-in David Luiz suddenly looking ten times the defender he once was, and Conte’s pre-Christmas influence starts to look almost miraculous.

The win over Tottenham was yet another feather in Conte’s cap. When Christian Eriksen fired Spurs ahead, as the visitors found early space in between the Stamford Bridge lines, it was tempting to conclude that Chelsea’s seemingly unstoppable Plan A had left them without the need to develop a Plan B.

Their stunning equaliser – certainly no fluke, either in Matic’s creation or Pedro’s execution – came at a fortunate moment just before half time, but Conte certainly wouldn’t have been carried away by it. You sense that the Chelsea dressing-room air turned just as blue as if they had gone in 1-0 down and, with that likely kick up the collective backside, they began the second half with gusto that Spurs couldn’t match.

Victor Moses’ thundering run in from nowhere to hit the winner summed it all up.

In the current climate, four years of managerial service at any club isn’t to be sniffed at, so Burnley were well within their rights to reward Sean Dyche for his service. Bottle of champagne, perhaps? A crystal dish that he’ll never use? Signed shirt?

Nope, a small figurine of Vladimir Lenin.

It may well be that Josh Sims is plying his trade on loan at MK Dons or somewhere in 2019 but, for one Sunday at the very least, he had a lot of people talking about him.

An assist within 43 seconds of his Premier League bow might not have been much use to Fantasy Football managers – such was Sims anonymity that he doesn’t even exist in the official database yet – but it was just the start of a stellar debut for the 19-year-old.

A standing ovation for the youngster will have compounded the misery for Ronald Koeman on his St Mary’s return – Everton continue to be less than the sum of their parts – but there should be room to appreciate (if not get disproportionately carried away by) the sight of a youth product mixing it among the fully-matured elite.

Sims will remember that standing ovation for a hell of a long time, no matter where he ends up.

The biggest individual drop-off within Leicester’s monumental (but not unexpected) collective title hangover is that of last season’s effervescent top scorer. A year ago, Jamie Vardy had 14 goals and had opposition defences almost literally running scared. This time around, he’s scored just two and – after that record-breaking goalscoring run in 2015/16 – he hasn’t troubled the scoresheet for 15 matches now.

Vardy was abject against Middlesbrough, eventually being replaced by Islam Slimani when it’s so often been Shinji Okazaki who makes way on the hour mark.

Leicester’s title success was built on the foundations of Claudio Ranieri’s refreshing approach to man-management. He will have to go back to the drawing board for Jamie Vardy as the 29-year-old experiences yet more uncharted territory in a career punctuated by unprecedented highs and lows.

The Guardian’s Lawrence Ostlere ventures inside the secretive Nike Academy, where talented young players find themselves all dressed up with nowhere to go. The future of youth development or an aimless marketing vehicle? You’ll decide.

What better way to brighten up a late-November Monday morning than with Norwich City’s 1989 official Christmas video (all 52 minutes of it – who even knew these were a thing?)

We pick up the action with a fresh-faced (yet still clearly wiseass) Tim Sherwood, who explains how he’d come to be at Carrow Road:

The signs were there in 1989, we just chose to ignore them until it was too late.

The standout fixture in Europe tomorrow is undoubtedly Inter vs Fiorentina in Serie A. This clash of the tita…wait, what’s that? Gabriel Batistuta’s retired now? Ronaldo’s become a perfect sphere? Fiorentina aren’t sponsored by Nintendo any more? It’s merely 12th vs 8th?! FORGET IT.