It was not the time to launch a forensic examination of the flaws in the argument that Aston Villa are a big club. It was not the place to bemoan the greyness of their football, the paucity of their ambition. A match played in the dark shadows cast by Gary Speed’s death lost its meaning, its purpose.

Aston Villa and Swansea were glad to get the goalless draw at the Liberty Stadium out of the way. Only now, some 48 hours later, does it feel appropriate to consider the implications of the undercurrent of unease at Villa Park.

Supporters need little inclination to take up the cudgels against a manager they believe is guilty of underestimating their club’s traditions. The appointment of Alex McLeish as Villa manager struck me as strange from the outset, because his background represents unnecessary incitement.

This time last year McLeish was across the second city, fashioning a functional Birmingham team that won the Carling Cup, but lost their place in the Premier League. He is a warm, likeable football man, whose record in Scottish football demands respect, but no one has ever accused him of being an advocate of the beautiful game.

His teams play beans on toast football. Stodgy, unspectacular, but it fills a hole. That’s all very well at a club like Birmingham, where horizons are limited. It goes down badly at a club like Villa, where fans like to think they have a more sophisticated palate. Villa, remember, are one of only four English clubs to win the European Cup.

American owner Randy Lerner understands those traditions, but will not throw good money after bad. Sensible Villa fans understand their club cannot compete, financially, but the search for compensations is becoming fractious.

The sight of limited players like Alan Hutton, employed in a defensive formation, has become a symbol of a side in stasis. Charles N’Zogbia has been an unimpressive investment. Darren Bent is a natural goalscorer, played in less than splendid isolation.

Saturday’s home game against Manchester United is the start of a sequence that may well define McLeish’s tenure. By the end of the month, Villa will also have faced Liverpool, Arsenal and Chelsea. A losing run will mean the season of goodwill to all men is postponed, at Villa Park, at least.

Tottenham have always talked a good game. They told us it was about glory. They adorned the stands at White Hart Lane with their club motto “To dare is to do”. Now, after decades of decorative football with little end product in terms of trophies, they are putting words into action.

Spurs are third in the Premier League, with a game in hand on second-placed Manchester United, following their 3-1 win at the Hawthorns on Saturday. They are playing flowing, thrilling, attacking football and in the process establishing themselves as every neutrals’ favourite.

Here are five reasons to celebrate if they beat the odds and win their first league title for 50 years.

Ledley King

He deserves to be absolved from the lament “if only”, which has dogged him throughout an injury-scarred, ill-starred career. On the pitch he is a defender of instinctive intelligence, a leader who can handle himself when it all gets a little physical. Off it he is an understated, considerate man, who appreciates the importance of a captain’s advisory role in helping emerging members of the squad.

Brad Friedel

At 40 he is the oldest Premier League player. But age is relative. His arrival, on a free transfer from Aston Villa, added a sense of stability and security to a defence blighted by the harum-scarum style of Heurelho Gomes. Another good character, a consummate professional. He hasn’t played so consistently for so long by accident.

Luka Modric

He must look at Chelsea, and the political firestorm that is burning Stamford Bridge to its very foundations, and offer a silent prayer of thanks. He would have been earning far more money had his agitation for a move in August succeeded, but he would have been trapped in a transitional team that lacks any sense of direction. At Spurs he finds himself the fulcrum of a team going places.

Rafael van der Vaart

Like all Dutch players, he knows his own mind, and is unafraid to speak it. He’s well worth a listen, because he is transferring lessons from a different culture. Like all great players, he has a vision in his head before he receives the ball, and the technical skill to be able to translate that into action. He also coaxes the best out of those around him.

Scott Parker

Some still portrayed him as a nearly man, despite becoming the first player at a relegated club to be named as the Football Writers’ Player of the Year. We scribblers don’t get a lot right, but that choice was spot on. He does the donkey work, wins the ball, and distributes it quickly and intelligently. It may not be rocket science, but he reminds us that football, at its best, is a simple game

You know what you are going to get with Craig Bellamy. A quiet life is out of the question. He will engage, and then enrage. He will beguile, and then bend over backwards to be awkward. But he cares, alright. Liverpool fans should learn to love him.

There were murmurings of disapproval of his version of the Liverpool way, aired in a typically fascinating interview on the club’s TV channel. He called for a renewal of the pass-and-move, attacking mindset that attracted him to Liverpool as a kid.

Some saw that as implied disrespect towards Rafa Benitez, and his equally conservative predecessor as Liverpool manager, Gerard Houllier. They were wrong. It was merely Bellamy speaking from the heart, a trait so rare in the modern player that it has the power to shock.

He feels the pull of Liverpool’s history, and knows his part within it has been unnecessarily insubstantial. Bellamy candidly admitted he should not have signed for Benitez, because the pair are poles apart, philosophically. He is more attuned to the approach of Kenny Dalglish, whom he hails as the embodiment of the club’s culture.

The cynics, of course, came to the conclusion that Bellamy’s devotion to the cause could have been summarised in two words – “Gizza job”. If you want to be regarded as more than an impact substitute, praising the manager isn’t a bad policy.

Yet that does the Welsh striker a disservice. He is a slave to emotions he cannot always control, but has a depth to his personality that makes you look beyond a sheaf of headlines, chronicling his disciplinary issues.

His charitable activity in Africa, selfless and hugely expensive, deserves the greatest praise. One small insight: when my son contacted his foundation, seeking information on their work, he received a hand-written reply from Bellamy, thanking him for his interest. Impressive.

Bellamy is, though, bloody-minded to a fault. That’s why Dalglish must pick him on Sunday, when Manchester City come to Anfield. Bellamy will not take his rejection by Roberto Mancini – who allowed him to leave City on a free transfer – lightly.

The light blue touch paper is burning. Sit back, and savour the fireworks…

Dear Santa. I know it is a bit early, but I’ve been a good boy this year, and I know what I want for Christmas. Can you arrange for Manchester City and Manchester United to be forced to play in the Europa League, please?

I’d love it. Absolutely love it.

Manchester City: all that money, all those promises. Manchester United: all that tradition, all those titles. They’d count for nothing on Thursday nights, in football’s equivalent of Siberian exile.

To be honest, United should have enough about them to get the result they require in Basel, and scramble into the last 16 of the Champions League. City have only themselves to blame for qualification being out of their hands, but plan A, in Abu Dhabi, was always to annexe the Premier League.

Yet indignity is a wonderful thing, in the right context. There will be something wonderfully demeaning about the Manchester giants ending up in a Lilliputian world populated by the likes of Vorskla Poltava and Shamrock Rovers.

The Europa Cup is a bit like those fifth officials, who stand and freeze behind the goals in European football. The competition is similarly pointless, a flawed gesture to progress. It has never adequately replaced the old UEFA Cup, and never will.

Fulham seem to have been playing in it, 24/7, since the last Ice Age. Stoke City’s upward mobility has been affected by its demands. City’s reserves will probably be installed as favourites to win it, if the worst happens. Will anyone care? I doubt it.

The founding father of the modern Manchester United, Sir Matt Busby, understood the power of the old European Cup. It feeds legend. Whoever is assigned to interview Sir Alex Ferguson on Thursday nights had better wear a Kevlar flak jacket. The Europa League is, simply, beneath a club of United’s stature.

Manchester City’s detractors will be distracted by domestic issues this season, but, if the £1billion gamble is to succeed, Champions League success is essential, in the medium term. No pressure, Roberto.

Here we go again. Chelsea have another match they must not lose, against Bayer Leverkusen in the Champions League tonight. They have another manager, prey to the whims of an owner who may be mute in public, but is frighteningly articulate in expressing his dissatisfaction.

And, at the centre of the maelstrom is John Terry, a captain who has come to embody Chelsea’s status as the club the neutral loves to hate. He is so accustomed to crisis he has absorbed its component parts into his character. He has survived, thrived, by drawing others into the force field of his personality.

This time, though, it may be different. Terry is no longer untouchable. His expertise in exercising political power at Chelsea has waned with his physical capabilities. The scorpion dance he has led with successive managers is more threatening to him than it has ever been.

That’s not to say Roman Abramovich should be trusted to ignore siren voices, telling him he has made another expensive mistake in employing André Villas-Boas. It is still fanciful to expect the young Portuguese coach to move immediately against Terry, a player whose populist touch means he retains a huge fanbase. But, for Chelsea to progress, he should make this his last season.

The signs of Terry’s decline are recurrent, damning. The image of him stumbling, as Robin van Persie sped away to secure Arsenal’s win at Stamford Bridge, is an enduring symbol of his weakness. The eccentricity of David Luiz drew some fire in the defeat to Liverpool, but Terry was slow, in both thought and deed.

One of the most interesting facts, unearthed in the inquest, was the reduction in Terry’s tackle-success rate, 68 percent compared to a career-high 93 percent in 2007-08. His apologists will insist all he needs is a reliable partner. They will point to the effectiveness of his pairing, at international level, with Gary Cahill, whom Bolton are desperate to sell in the January transfer window.

But that will merely delay the inevitable. Terry, who has made no secret of his ambition to manage Chelsea, is unlikely to go quietly. But go he should, together with Didier Drogba, another who has history in influencing both dressing room and boardroom.

Villas-Boas deserves time to do it his own way, with his own players. Terry represents Chelsea’s past, not its future.

Sir Bobby Charlton is a naturally cautious man who has a unique insight into the power of Manchester United’s history. So, when he invoked the legend of Duncan Edwards to describe Phil Jones’ potential, the football world understood the magnitude of the compliment.

Praise simply doesn’t come any bigger. It also doesn’t do the recipient many favours. The pressure of playing for Manchester United is sufficiently daunting, even without having the club’s most cherished ghost sitting on your shoulder.

Talk to anyone at Manchester United, however, and they say the same thing: Jones is unflappable. He’s The Natural, a level-headed kid who takes everything in his stride. Nothing in football is more certain than his eventual installation as captain of club and country.

Initial impressions linger. I first saw him playing for Blackburn at home to Arsenal last season, and was struck by his aura of authority. It was only his fourth senior appearance, and reminded me of a night at Highbury long ago, when I saw another 18-year-old announce himself as something special. His name? Tony Adams.

His career offers both encouragement, and a warning. Adams was, by his own admission, a flawed character, whose defects were exaggerated by fame. For someone who led by such spectacular example, he lacked self esteem.

Jones understands he is far from the finished article. His unfamiliarity at right back could have cost United victory at Swansea on Saturday, when his ball-watching allowed Scott Sinclair to make one of the misses of the season.

Ryan Giggs talked him through the game at Anfield, where his initiation in central midfield emboldened Fabio Capello, who tested his maturity and versatility against world champions Spain.

Sir Alex Ferguson feels that Jones will eventually settle as a central defender, but knows he can play him anywhere against Benfica in the Champions League at Old Trafford tonight. He admits: “I don’t think putting pressure on him is a big worry.”

Just as well, because expectations have rarely been greater.

The most important football story of the week does not involve Jack Rodwell’s emergence, John Terry’s defiance or Carlos Tevez’s truculence. It features Everton, the principle of a People’s Club, and the way the game can brighten blighted lives.

Few outside the Westminster Village took notice when Michael Gove, the Education Secretary, announced to the House of Commons that Everton had become the first Premier League club granted government permission to open a free school.

I know how it is. Even Everton fans are more concerned with chairman Bill Kenwright’s search for a new owner than the club’s chance to rescue 120 teenagers from underachievement and social alienation.

Perspective is for wimps. A groin strain is a trauma, a last-minute equaliser is a tragedy. Anti-capitalist activists may be camped outside St Paul’s Cathedral, but the anarchy of the transfer market is accepted, even celebrated.

But, please, bear with me.

The club’s charitable arm, Everton in the Community, has won awards for its work. The school, due to open in September next year, will be for pupils aged between 14 and 19 who are in danger of exclusion from mainstream education. In other words, they are kids earmarked as human landfill.

I’m not making a political point here, but I once worked on a Premier League project, helping to bring clubs closer to their communities. The power of football, to attract and aid the vulnerable and underprivileged, is humbling to see at first hand.

Everton’s scheme, which involves 26 disability teams, has been voted the best in Europe. It supports 1,500 local charities a year. Social programmes have contributed to a 55% reduction in anti-social behaviour and a 79% reduction in crime in challenging areas across Merseyside.

That won’t mean a row of beans to Everton fans if their team continues its unequal struggle against better funded sides. But league tables only tell a fraction of the story. They don’t reflect the quality of David Moyes’ management, or the class of such players as Phil Jagielka, Leighton Baines and Rodwell.

They also ignore what a football club can do to help those who need help the most.

Fittingly, for someone blessed with a sprinter’s pace, things are happening fast for Kyle Walker. He is still growing into his role as a Tottenham regular, and is suddenly breathing the rarefied air of international football. Tonight Wembley, tomorrow the world.

The Tottenham defender made his England debut, a five-minute cameo, against Spain on Saturday. His first start, against Sweden, will accelerate his progress, at the vanguard of a new generation. With Micah Richards seemingly out of favour in Fabio Capello’s problem position of right-back, the opportunity to secure a place in the Euro 2012 squad is obvious.

Timing is everything in football. Capello’s deathbed conversion to younger players, unscarred by underachievement or criticism, works in Walker’s favour. He knows no fear. Nurtured shrewdly by Spurs, who loaned him out to QPR and Aston Villa last season, he is not afflicted by the neuroses which ambush more seasoned pros in an England squad.

The England team hotel has had the air of a seven-star security compound since the weekend. John Terry is being treated, by FA officials, as an unexploded bomb. Little wonder, then, that so many stars resist the implication that they are role models. The burden isn’t worth the hassle.

Walker, like many emerging players, is a little more grounded. That’s important, at a time when the game is growing away from its roots. Football still stimulates the sense of wonderment he first felt as a four-year-old, going to Sheffield United games with his grandad.

Kyle gets his work ethic from his dad, a builder, who preached family values as they grew up in Sharrow, on a council estate in central Sheffield. He owes his break into the professional game to a kick-about in a local park, organised by a local charity, Football Unites, Racism Divides.

Sheffield United almost released him at 16, because of the slightness of his stature. Yet he is a quick learner, and has solved Harry Redknapp’s problem of finding the right sort of right-back. Walker’s instinct is to push forward and augment the likes of Aaron Lennon, but he has worked on his defensive discipline.

He reminds me of Ashley Cole, in the early stages of his career at Arsenal. Tottenham’s coaching staff are convinced Walker will be a regular, for club and country, for the next decade. It’s hard to disagree.

The Chinese will welcome 2012 as the Year of the Dragon, in which legend dictates a newly born child will wear the crown of destiny. Arsenal fans will welcome 2012 as the Year of the Ox, and can tell you exactly who will wear the crown of destiny. His name? Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain.

Tonight, in the Belgian town of Mons, the latest heir to Arsenal’s traditions will continue his emergence as a player of stature and potential with the England Under-21 team. His bloodlines are pure. His character is unblemished. His future seems assured.

Fabio Capello thought hard about promoting him to the senior squad, on the evidence of four first-team appearances for Arsenal, following his £12million move from Southampton. He decided against, but, following the success of emerging players such as Jack Rodwell and Phil Jones against Spain, will find it hard to resist in the months to come.

Oxlade-Chamberlain is worth a cheeky punt, as the surprise package of Euro 2012. I saw his dad, Stoke winger Mark Chamberlain, play for England. With all due respect, his son has the potential to make him, at his prime, look like a one-dimensional scuffler.

Alex’s lacerating acceleration, and adhesive control, allows him to run at defences at will. Full-backs lunge, and look silly. But what convinces me of his ability to make a wider impact is his instinctive, intelligent use of possession. Whisper it, but he would fit into the Spanish squad.

Arsène Wenger believes in nurturing players sensibly, cautiously. He doesn’t force his chicks out of their nest too quickly. Yet, already, there is overwhelming evidence that Oxlade-Chamberlain is an even better prospect than Theo Walcott, his fellow product of the Southampton academy.

Stuart Pearce, who has seen him evolve into a key player in his under-21 side, has emerged as an unlikely father figure: “You put him out there, let him make mistakes, or flourish. Praise him for the good things, then give him little pointers to improve.”

He will get better. His coaches speak of a well-balanced kid, mentally and physically. He’s the future, now.

So, Newcastle fans, what are you going to do about it? How are you going to react to an owner who ignores the heresy of tampering with history? Trot out the old anthems and accusations? Or quietly accept your impotence, and mourn your loss of innocence?

Or will you distil your anger, refine the battle plan? Will you get to know your enemy, a little bit better? Will you realise the magnitude of your opportunity? Remember, a lot of clubs are watching the fallout from Newcastle’s decision to rename St James’ Park.

That decision was taken by the sort of people who refer to important football matches as “brand touchstones”. They have the ear of Newcastle owner Mike Ashley and, as a breed, are a parasitic presence across modern football.

They see stadium naming rights as a nice little earner, in difficult times. And there, Newcastle fans, is your chance. You, the consumer, have immense power. Your loyalty is unquestioned, and your disposable income is factored into their sales forecasts. They may not care what you think, but they covet your cash.

Take direct action. You don’t need to set up a tented village in the forecourt of what you, me and the milkman will still refer to as St James’. Boycott club shops in the run-up to Christmas. Don’t bother to buy the match programme, the club TV channel, or the services of assorted ‘partners’, who will take your bets and sell you a car.

Unfollow the official Twitter feed, if you must. It’s Pravda in 140 characters, anyway.

Abandon your sense of victimhood, which, in the past, has allowed the Hall family and Freddie Shepherd to make millions from the Geordie Nation. Treat Mike Ashley’s business empire with the contempt he treats you. Hit him where it hurts most – in the wallet.

Roll over, and others will suffer. Old Trafford will be named after a Vietnamese beer. Anfield will be associated with an obscure Chinese banking group. Stamford Bridge will be the flagship for an Eastern European aluminium smelting plant.

Can civil disobedience work? Why not? This is a town where an Indian restaurant becomes an internet hit, simply by promising Newcastle players free curry for life, if they finish in the top six this season.

Ashley’s PR people have made great play in linking his company’s soaring profits with Newcastle’s unbeaten start to the season. Give them something to worry about – a slump in sales that may hit the share price.

But, whatever you do, don’t whinge for a while, and let things drift. It’s time to bully the bully.