Morning folks. How we all doing on this Monday morning? Still reeling from the weekend?

At least the defeat by The Scum and humbling United took gives a little crumb of humour to proceedings. When you can’t revel in your own glory, do it in the failings of others, eh?

What that does do after the latest round of fixtures is already give a very familiar look to the top of the table already, which is mental when you think we’re only three games in, but there City sit on a massive goal difference, with Liverpool also behind them on a pretty sizeable one too. City and Liverpool fans will be rightly happy with their start and were it not for the refereeing blunder that I won’t go over again, we’d be pretty good about it too. We did have an interesting chat on the Same Old Arsenal podcast yesterday morning (when not bemoaning the existence of Chris Kavanagh as a Premier League referee) about the familiarity of it all. Amanda talked about how depressed it made her feel; the futility of effort of being up against Man City after their demolition of West Ham on Saturday evening. Then you’ve got a lot of talk in the summer about how Klopp will be an impossible man to replace at Liverpool and that Arne Slot would find it difficult. But they’ve gone ahead and won their first three games and all of a sudden there’s a fair bit of chatter that not a lot has changed and Liverpool and City are already showing their colours for the season ahead.

I get it. Against an opponent where even the slightest slip up feels like you’ve lost it all, it can seem a little tough. Against an opponent that supposedly – and traditionally – starts slowly but then is crazy good at the end of the season, losing ground early can also dent your hopes. But I just had a quick look at the last two season’s of City’s results and in 2022/23 they beat West Ham 2-0, newly promoted Bournemouth 4-0, drew with Newcastle 3-3, beat Palace 4-2 and then beat newly promoted Forest 6-0 in their first five games. In 2023/24 they beat Newcastle at home, newly promoted Sheffield United 2-1, Fulham 5-1, West Ham 3-1 and Forest 2-0. This season they have beaten Chelsea away, newly promoted Ipswich at home, West Ham this weekend. You can see a pattern of wins against West Ham early in the season developing, eh? But there is also a pattern of this ‘slow start’ being a bit of a misnomer; City go on a bit of a run even early doors in the season, usually because they get what looks like a standard victory against West Ham, plus a newly promoted side, then an occasional tricky one.

For Liverpool if we go back a few season’s to 2022/23 they kicked off with draws at Fulham, at home to Palace, then a decent win at home to United. They then beat newly promoted Bournemouth 9-0 and Newcastle 2-1 at Anfield. In 2023/24 they kicked off with a draw away to Chelsea, a 3-1 win to Bournemouth at home, a 2-1 win against Newcastle (a pretty difficult and impressive result, to be fair), as well as wins against Villa (another tough game) and Wolves away. So for the Scousers I’d say it’s been a mixed bag, but they’ve generally had relatively decent run of fixtures to kick off their season.

We kicked off 2022/23 with a tough win away at Palace (where we’ve suffered a few times there in recent years), a win against Leicester at home 4-2, a win away to newly promoted Bournemouth 3-0, victory at home to Fulham 2-1 and an impressive revenge win against Villa 2-1. Last season it was 2-1 against Forest, 1-0 win away at Palace,2-2 at home to Fulham, 3-1 at home to United before a hard-fought 1-0 at Everton. So I’d call both of those fixtures a smattering of tricky but ultimately not hugely taxing starts for us.

I guess my point in all of this listing of fixtures is that if you – probably like me if we don’t get positive results in our next two games – are feeling like ‘everything is over’ when we get to the end of September and we’re a few points behind Liverpool and City, there is no need for complete despair, because the start to this season is really quite difficult when you compare it to both our opponents, but also historically. We’ve tended to have at least one challenging game in there in the first five, but it feels like this season we have four out of five. Villa are in the Champions League. Brighton are a good side and we would have won that game had it not been for the already aforementioned nonsense on Saturday we would have navigated it. Conversely, Man City have played a bit of a disjointed Chelsea learning a new approach under a new manager, newly promoted Ipswich Town, West Ham under a new manager trying a different approach, before they play Brentford at home when we go to The Scum and then us at home the following week. They’ve been given the luxury of easing themselves in to their stride with their fixtures – we have not.

Liverpool too, have been able to ease themselves in, playing newly promoted Ipswich, Brentford at home, yesterday will have been a big game for them so you have to say fair enough – they have dealt well with United, then next week they play Nottingham Forest at home, before playing Bournemouth at home when we go to City. I know, I know, “you have to play everyone twice”, etc, etc, but I’m just stating that context matters when looking at the start to this season and for us I think we are all going to need a big dose of it by the time October comes around. Arne Slot has just done what you’d expect him to do; don’t break something that works, keep the continuity of life that Liverpool had under Klopp (let’s also not forget the mess Arteta inherited of a squad compared to what Slot is working with), get some early ‘W’s on the board. For us, we might be sitting mid table after two more draws, or in the top half, but that start to the season, with the away games we would have put behind us, would feel a little like the season we just missed out on top four three seasons ago; really tough, didn’t go our way, but we just had to pick up the momentum a little later than we’d have liked.

Remind me of this post at the end of September if I’m having a mini meltdown after we’ve lost out next two Premier League games, though, eh? 😉

Catch you all tomorrow