Football’s leagues did not used to publish tables until three games in. What would be the point? First game, the club with the biggest win would be top, their opponents bottom. It didn’t mean anything. It didn’t inform.
Even freezing the action after the four games played this season offers no guaranteed insight. At this stage last season, Watford, not Tottenham, were among the Champions League places, and none of the bottom three were clubs that eventually went down.
The year before, Watford were again top four, Huddersfield top six and the bottom seven included Arsenal. Yet some clues were visible.
Brendan Rodgers and Leicester City are attempting to gatecrash the elite clubs this season
Last season, the Champions League places after four games were already occupied by three of the clubs that would qualify. This year? Maybe the same.
Liverpool, Manchester City, Leicester, Crystal Palace is the way the table currently stands. And having seen the rest of the elite in action, there is no guarantee what we have come to regard as normal service will be resumed.
Are Leicester inferior to those missing members of the big six? Not from what we have witnessed so far. May they be joined by another member from outside the gilded band? It is far from impossible.
Leicester won the league in 2016, we are always told, because the big clubs were in transition. Yet that is also true this season. Manchester United and Chelsea are most certainly in flux, Tottenham are evolving slowly, Arsenal are trying to progress despite a defence that makes squirrels in traffic look confident and self-determined.
Big changes are under way throughout two thirds of the traditional elite. Once again, Leicester could be the beneficiaries. They look good under Brendan Rodgers. They have improved defensively, Jamie Vardy is in outstanding nick again, James Maddison is among the best young players in the country. They have bought well, too, and are intelligently organised.
It was no surprise at all that Leicester got a draw away at Chelsea last month, and might even have won. In current form, they could play four of the big six off evens right now, despite having sold them two of their best players in Harry Maguire and N’Golo Kante.
Beyond that, looking down the table, are clubs such as Everton, West Ham, Crystal Palace and, in the distance, Wolves. Clubs that have invested, that have bought well, that have a strong philosophy and individual talents, such as Wilfried Zaha, turning matches.
Manchester United are on their worst start to a league season since 1992-93 and are in flux
The top four may be too much, but the Europa League? Why not? The big six no longer look like the top six. Not this year. Chelsea, for instance, could be anything. Jurgen Klopp loves what Frank Lampard is trying to do, and so he should, but there is no guarantee it will be successful in his first season.
The same with United, who are also inconsistent. They beat Chelsea 4-0 on the first day but, after four games, have their lowest points total since 1992-93. They won the league that year, but it will not happen this time. Liverpool and Manchester City are streets away.
As of now, they are their own breakaway league. Burnley at Turf Moor would be a tough game for many of their peers, yet Liverpool breezed it. United drew 1-1 against a Southampton team down to 10 men for the final 17 minutes on Saturday, Liverpool travelled to the same ground on the back of a midweek UEFA Super Cup final in Istanbul against Chelsea that went to extra-time and penalties, and won 2-1.
When the Premier League reconvenes after this international break, Leicester visit Old Trafford. On paper, United should win. On historical form, too, given that Leicester were last victorious in the league there on January 31, 1998. Yet Crystal Palace hadn’t won in the league at Old Trafford since 1989, so will the home fans feel confident about what will unfold against Leicester? The gap has been closed by the Premier League’s collective wealth.
One of the reasons the big six demanded a bigger share of the overseas rights is they saw mid-ranking clubs achieving increasing impact in the transfer market. Caglar Soyuncu, Youri Tielemans, Ayoze Perez and, of course, Vardy, were all players who were linked to bigger clubs at one stage but, when that opportunity did not materialise, have ended up at Leicester.
The rump of those below the elite have all recruited talent that would not look out of place in a Champions League fixture: Richarlison, Zaha, Ruben Neves, Sebastien Haller.
Players such as Richarlison highlight the improvements sides chasing the top six have made
Jose Mourinho identified this change when he was manager of Chelsea and Crystal Palace bought Yohan Cabaye from Paris Saint-Germain. Mourinho said Cabaye was a player he might have signed had he room in his squad. Now, instead of going elsewhere in Europe, he was within Palace’s grasp. West Ham, Newcastle even, have paid the equivalent price for a striker that Liverpool paid for Mo Salah. It is no longer unthinkable a player of his quality might be signed by a mid-table club, if the elite are distracted. And pressure builds again.
Of course, injury to a significant first-team player can do greater damage outside the top six than in it. Manchester City won the title last season with Kevin De Bruyne starting less than a third of their league games. A similar injury to Vardy, Kante or Riyad Mahrez would have utterly derailed Leicester in their miracle season.
Yet little beyond Liverpool and Manchester City has given the rest of the Premier League reason to fear so far. Crystal Palace have won at Manchester United, Newcastle at Tottenham, Chelsea have dropped points at home to Sheffield United.
The special clubs aren’t looking too special.
Leicester to finish top four, and another of the outsiders to invade the top six? Nothing in this first month suggests it cannot happen.
No laws can ever stop clubs being run badly
Oldham, it is widely stated, are the next Bury – although their owner Abdallah Lemsagam furiously denies this. Another Bury is out there, though. Whether in three months, three years or three decades, a poorly run football club will go bust. And when it does, there will be more cries that something should be done.
Yet what, exactly? And we need to be very exact because vague promises or ambitions have never solved any financial crisis whether in football or the weekend before pay day. The leagues could pass regulations demanding every owner shows proof of funds to last the season before it begins. Yet how many clubs in Leagues One and Two have a float of that size?
Outlawing the sale of stadiums might help, too, although that would come too late for many clubs and might lead to an exodus of owners who see such a move as a last-gasp insurance policy. Equally there could be covenants protecting aspects of club identity, such as name, location, colours and badge.
This would stop a new owner changing blue to red or attempting to create Hull Tigers, but it is window dressing against the serious business of survival. And that’s the nub, because one of the reasons Oldham are in trouble is that they have burned through 30 managers – including caretakers and returning employees – since 1994. Yet what is the Football League to do about that?
Oldham Athletic are widely viewed as the next club to follow neighbours Bury into trouble
There are laws to stop a business being run fraudulently or against regulations, but nothing averts a rotten business plan. How can it? Are the league to start intervening in decisions about managers and players? No club would support this.
Owners want the room to manoeuvre, to make mistakes and correct them. Nobody thinks they are running a bad shop. Bury had nine strikers at one stage. It was lunacy. Yet what were the Football League to do – review recruitment? There has to be the freedom to run your business even if, from the outside, you look a fool.
The same is true of takeovers. Say the Football League had intervened in Steve Dale’s purchase of Bury for £1 and the club had gone under last season. The fans would have been outraged. They would have convinced themselves Dale was a saviour, a man with a plan.
All new owners peddle that line. And because clubs are often bought in a state of distress the fans do not want to hear that the new custodian, the one selling the dream of sunlit uplands, is a charlatan.
So while in the aftermath of Bury’s demise the rhetoric will be colourful and the calls to act loud, the reality is rather different. There are no laws against being bad at running a football club and, no matter how sad we feel for Bury, it is hard to imagine there ever will be.
Why is VAR letting cheats prosper?
Among the most frustrating flaws of VAR is that it is addressing problems we didn’t have and ignoring those we find infuriating.
Nobody was greatly concerned about the ball glancing a stray arm in the build up to a goal – unless that arm ended up putting it in the net.
Yet VAR is all over this, misinterpreting the rules and disallowing good goals for no good reason. In the meantime, cheating goes unpunished.
West Ham United’s Andriy Yarmolenko dived against Norwich but VAR missed the simulation
On Saturday, Andriy Yarmolenko of West Ham plainly dived. He wasn’t just ‘looking for it’ as Harry Kane was against Arsenal on Sunday, no matter his protestations. Kane was tricky, stopping and changing direction so Sokratis could barely avoid him. It was poor from England’s captain, but he created enough doubt that a yellow card would have seemed harsh. Yarmolenko, by comparison, was blatant.
There was no one near him when he took his tumble and it is incredible Paul Tierney, the referee, missed it. He did not award a penalty, but nor did he caution Yarmolenko.
VAR should have informed Tierney he had missed a clear and obvious simulation, advising a booking at the next break in play. Instead, nothing.
That is why VAR gets bad reviews. We could be rid of this. We should be rid of it. Instead cheats prosper and decent goals are erased. Nobody signed up for that.
High price of training at Carrington
Manchester City are looking for new tenants to take over the Carrington training ground now vacated by Bury. City had allowed Bury to use the facility rent-free, providing it was maintained, which it was not. Now it will be available for roughly £80,000 a year, and Salford City are among those interested.
Yet caution would be advised. Steve Parish, Crystal Palace’s chairman, said last week that the difference with the modern transfer market is instead of prices being set by where a player comes from, it is now his destination dictating the market.
Bury certainly found this, once in possession of the swanky surrounds that had housed City the year of their first Premier League title. Karl Evans, Bury’s former chief executive officer, said it entirely skewed the perception of how much money the club had.
Salford City are interested in becoming the new tenants of Man City’s Carrington training base
‘It attracted the wrong sort of player,’ he said. ‘I felt as though their agents would turn up, see the set-up and think they had better ask for another grand a week.’
Knowing Gary Neville’s attitude to some of the dilettantes at Manchester United, one imagines this is the last thing he would want for Salford.
‘There’s been a bit of talk that he’s got the wood over me, but he hasn’t got me out,’ Steve Smith said of Jofra Archer.
‘Well, I can’t get him out if he wasn’t there,’ Archer replied, having struck Smith on the head, forcing him to miss Australia’s last three innings. This is more like it. Roll on Wednesday, roll on the Ashes. You don’t get this in the white-ball game.
Langford is on his last lap
Kyle Langford has been accused of abusing a fellow competitor in the 800metres at the British Championships in Birmingham.
He is believed to have behaved aggressively towards James McCarthy in an earlier race, too, and his place at the World Championships could now be in jeopardy. This follows an incident in July when he received a written warning for attacking an elderly race official.
Langford is currently ranked 29th in the world for his distance and finished eighth in the final of the trial event. Without him, it’s fair to say we’ll manage.
Kyle Langford (second from right) has been accused of abusing a fellow competitor in 800m
Ben Stokes received a Tottenham shirt to mark his Headingley heroics, and immediately declared himself a fan. What a pity, that National Treasure stuff was going so well, too. That’s three quarters of the capital gone, for a start.