Five things we learned from the weekend football

1 Premier League top-four race is heating up

Some bookmakers have already paid out on Liverpool winning the Premier League title and the rampant Reds are clearly on the verge of ending their 30-year title drought.

Unless something dramatic happens they will do so in comfortable fashion. But there should still be some interesting battles for Champions League qualification as the top-four race heats up.

Fourth-placed Chelsea, who have conceded more goals than Arsenal, continue to look shaky defensively and will be nervously looking over their shoulders following the weekend results.

They lost to Everton, continuing their run of no away league clean sheets, while Manchester United's improvement was highlighted by their brilliant 2-1 derby success at Manchester City.

United also beat Spurs on Wednesday, so are clearly perking up and Tottenham bounced back from their Old Trafford disappointment to thrash Burnley 5-0.

Wolves picked up a fair point at Brighton and, while City and Leicester should be good things for Champions League qualification, fourth spot looks up for grabs.

2 Bournemouth battered by injuries

The relegation battle is also ultra-competitive and Bournemouth need to make sure they don't get sucked into trouble as injuries pile up for Eddie Howe's squad.

Bournemouth's 3-0 defeat to Liverpool was a total hammering - the leaders had all nine of the shots on target as they made it five league defeats in a row for the Cherries.

Nathan Ake and Callum Wilson, influential figures in both boxes, were injured at the weekend and join a packed treatment room which includes Josh King, Adam Smith, Steve Cook and David Brooks.

3 Duncan Ferguson can give Everton time

Niko Kovac was slashed from 50-1 to become the favourite to be Everton's next manager after being spotted at Goodison Park on Saturday, although the former Bayern Munich manager insists he is in England purely to take in a number of fixtures across the weekend.

Whether Kovac is the man to replace Marco Silva remains to be seen, but the 3-1 win over Chelsea suggests the Everton board can take their time in making the right appointment with caretaker boss Duncan Ferguson having galvanised the squad.

Big Dunc certainly had the Toffees fired up - their tally of 37 tackles was the most made in this season's Premier League.

4 Phil Parkinson has questions to answer at Sunderland

When Phil Parkinson was appointed as Sunderland's manager on October 17 the club were sixth in Sky Bet League One and still in three cup competitions.

They are now out of the FA Cup, League Cup and EFL Trophy and have slumped to 11th in the third tier following Saturday's bitterly disappointing 1-0 defeat to Gillingham.

A section of supporters were singing "You don't know what you're doing," and Parkinson faces a battle to win over the doubters, particularly as he decided to drop big names including Aiden McGeady.

Next up for the Black Cats is a home date with Blackpool and a reunion with former manager Simon Grayson, who will believe he has a few scores to settle after feeling he was harshly portrayed in the Netflix documentary which followed Sunderland's Championship relegation campaign.

5 Rangers getting closer but not close enough

All the pre-match money was for Rangers and they dominated large parts of the Betfred Cup final but once again Celtic lifted the silverware as Christopher Jullien's controversial goal saw the Bhoys home with their only shot on target.

Steven Gerrard's wait for a trophy goes on as Rangers missed a penalty and failed to take advantage of an extra man for the last half an hour. They are getting closer but the last step is often the hardest to take.

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