Nothing heralds the beginning of autumn more than people stating that it is “too early to look at the league table”. Listen to some and you might be convinced there was once a glorious era when those interested in football didn’t even glance at the standings until eight, 10, maybe even 12 games in.
The truth is that, even back in September 1888, when league football as a concept was only a week old, publications were printing the tables (albeit without the number of points won, as that detail had not been invented yet). Similarly, in the 1980s and 1990s, the BBC’s Ceefax news service and ITV equivalent Teletext happily displayed league tables to UK viewers after one round of games, because that was the point of that particular page. Seeing your team top of the pile after a surprise 5-0 opening-day win is a joyful sight, no matter what decade you are operating in.
Where anti-early-table campaigners may have a point is when it comes to extrapolating how a season will go, based on the nascent standings.
Clubs have been crowned champions after starting badly, and Carlisle United won the first three games in 1974-75, their only year in the top flight, and finished last. But equally, in some seasons you can get a grasp of how things are going to turn out after only three games.
As the graph below shows, 2023-24 was one of those, with a 0.8 correlation between the table after three weeks in late August and its final form in the middle of May.
So, with a mere 7.9 per cent of the 2024-25 Premier League season completed, we asked some of our club writers how much they think the table reflects their club’s prospects for the rest of it.
Manchester City: Top of the league with a 100 per cent record and the leading scorers after three games. Is a fifth successive title inevitable?
Sam Lee: Whenever Pep Guardiola has been asked about City’s performance after these opening three games, he has not focused on many, if any, technical details or the actual quality of their displays, but the amount of commitment the players have shown in specific circumstances, such as defending throw-ins and tracking back. Those, he says, are signs that they have not dropped their motivation after winning the title for a fourth year in a row.
Stuff like that will probably give the biggest indication of their levels this season, because their quality is not in doubt, but whether they actually win the league again or not is another thing entirely. Arsenal and Liverpool have missed out by the tiniest of margins in recent years, and that can even happen to City when races are so tight. But it seems that, come the end of the season, they “will be there”, as Guardiola likes to say.
Liverpool (second): Maximum points, with the division’s best defence. That’s a mirror of 2018-19. Will the rest of 2024-25 pan out in the same way? And if so, is that a decent first season for head coach Arne Slot?
Gregg Evans: Let’s not get carried away, like last season when everything looked so sweet in the early months of the campaign. Granted, this has been a decent start under Slot and, if there’s one major difference, it’s the amount of control Liverpool are starting to find in games. They appear to be better equipped to go ahead and then hold onto a lead — the issue at times was conceding the first goal so often — so that’s a good sign.
Yet to get anywhere near their 2018-19 points tally of 97, which incredibly wasn’t enough to win the title as City got 98, there needs to be a significant change in the treatment room. Liverpool didn’t fall out of last season’s title race in March and April because the players weren’t good enough, they slipped away when injuries started to bite and levels dropped on the back of rushed returns by first-team faces.
It’s simple: keep the players fit and fresh, and Slot’s side have a great chance of finishing second, or one place higher.
Arsenal (fourth): Two points dropped at home in the third game of the season, just like in 2023-24. That draw with Fulham, technically, cost them the title. Will 2024-25 be different?
Art de Roche: The main difference between last season and this one was supposed to be that Arsenal would be more settled. Mikel Arteta’s starting line-up did not evolve much with this summer’s transfer business, which has allowed some players to pick up where they left off, but the past two weeks have been tough.
New signing Mikel Merino suffered a shoulder injury in his first training session, Declan Rice was sent off against Brighton & Hove Albion and Martin Odegaard was forced off with injury playing for Norway on Monday night. While Rice will return from suspension after Sunday’s north London derby, it means Arsenal will miss the entirety of what was meant to be their first-choice midfield for at least one game. And that just increases the importance of negotiating an extremely tricky opening to the season, with a visit to Manchester City to come next Sunday.
Despite being two points off Guardiola’s side at this point last year, Arsenal still took the title race to the season’s final day. How they fare away to Tottenham Hotspur and then City in the next 10 days may determine their ceiling for 2024-25, so going into those matches with belief in each other and the system will be essential.
Newcastle United: They are fifth. Finishing there would be progress (and possibly bring Champions League qualification). Job done?
Chris Waugh: If you offered that as a final position to most Newcastle fans now, surely a decent proportion of them would take it following a turbulent summer in which the first XI simply was not strengthened and the Marc Guehi saga came to define their window. Performance-wise in these early games, Newcastle have yet to resemble an Eddie Howe outfit; there has been a lack of intensity and energy in their game. On the ball, they have been frustratingly wasteful, with a passing accuracy rate of just 73.96 per cent — the lowest in the Premier League.
But there are two ways of evaluating Newcastle’s start.
The pessimistic one is that they have been extremely lucky. There is an argument they have deserved to lose all three of their opening fixtures given the balance of play and, if they continue to labour in this way, results will turn against them.
However, the more optimistic one, which this correspondent tends to subscribe to, is that Newcastle are unbeaten, are off to their best start in a league season under Howe and have accumulated their highest number of points after three games of a top-flight campaign since 2011-12. They are yet to really get going and, once fitness levels are boosted and now that everyone inside the club can refocus with the transfer window having closed, they will improve and have a strong platform from which to build.
The club’s stated target is securing European football for 2025-26, but fifth place would still represent quite the achievement, given the lack of fresh faces.
Aston Villa: Seventh right now — that’s where Newcastle finished after being in the Champions League disrupted their 2023-24 season. Will Villa do better than that, or not?
Jacob Tanswell: Villa had injuries last season, too. And still finished fourth. They were not a team that used excuses, nor did they let an intense schedule balancing domestic and European football allow minds to become tired. In the end, they ground out Champions League qualification and that type of staying power will be needed.
Unai Emery’s side have started pretty well with two wins and one defeat — the latter coming against Arsenal in a game that could have gone either way. Villa will be aiming for a top-six finish provided injuries do not derail their hopes. Emery’s background in balancing European competitions with consistency in the league will be relied upon but a relative rejuvenation of the squad over the summer should keep it fresh.
Tottenham (10th): Good going forward, susceptible at the back, sat in mid-table. Which of those elements will change between now and the end of the season?
Jay Harris: Spurs were the protagonists in the biggest transfer of the summer, committing £65million ($84.9m) to sign striker Dominic Solanke — but he picked up an ankle injury on his debut in the opener against Leicester City and has missed the two games since. When Solanke is up and running, head coach Ange Postecoglou will be confident his side can show a ruthlessness in front of goal that was missing in their 2-1 away defeat against Newcastle. Centre-back Micky van de Ven was unavailable at St James’ Park too, so when Spurs have their full-strength XI available they should quickly start climbing the table.
The only problem is things might get worse before Postecoglou’s side see any improvement, as they face Arsenal, Brentford and Manchester United in the next three league games.
Last season, Tottenham roared out of the blocks with eight wins and two draws from the first 10 matches before fading. This one could end up being the opposite.
Chelsea (11th): A win, a draw and a defeat. Which will the club have more of by the end of the season?
Liam Twomey: The lesson of their first three Premier League games of 2024-25 is that Chelsea under new coach Enzo Maresca are, unsurprisingly, a work in progress. Losing at home to Manchester City on the opening weekend was expected, though the comfortable manner in which the champions held Maresca’s team at arm’s length that day even when without several of their key starters was dispiriting.
One clinical four-goal half against Wolverhampton Wanderers masked the kind of chaotic game more associated with Mauricio Pochettino’s 2023-24 tenure. Chelsea were at their most convincing in the opening 45 minutes of their third match, against Crystal Palace, but lost control after the break and with it, two points.
Maresca’s squad has the talent to finish in the top four, but they are young, learning a new style of play and arguably remain a little unbalanced. Chelsea will win more than they lose, but there are going to be more mistakes along the way.
The main priority for Maresca is to ensure the gap to whoever is in fourth place does not become insurmountable during these early weeks, as it soon did under Pochettino.
Manchester United (14th): Last season’s eighth-place finish was the club’s lowest since they came 13th in 1990. Could this squad feasibly finish in the bottom half?
Mark Critchley: Ask Erik ten Hag and he would tell you that his team finishing eighth was the freak result of an unrelenting injury crisis. But you could coherently argue United were lucky to end up that high — sort the final 2023-24 Premier League table by expected goal difference and United’s -12.5 puts them 15th. So yes, this squad are capable of a bottom-half finish, according to the underlying numbers at least.
Plenty has changed since last season, though. Five new signings filled every priority position targeted at the start of the summer window, Ten Hag’s backroom staff has been reshuffled and new co-owner INEOS’ key appointments to a reformed internal structure are in place.
But on the evidence of United’s opening three games, plenty of familiar issues remain. So does Ten Hag. And with no sign of the injuries letting up either, an improvement on last season is hardly guaranteed.
Everton: Bottom after three games, again. Is another relegation battle inevitable or is this just what happens to Sean Dyche in August?
Patrick Boyland: Certainly part of this is just Dyche’s record in August. His teams are notoriously slow starters and he has the second-lowest win percentage (12 per cent) of anyone to manage more than 10 Premier League games in the first month of the season.
Everton have looked undercooked heading into the new campaign, a raft of pre-season injuries and the injury absence of key defender Jarrad Branthwaite leaving them vulnerable to a sloppy start. Dyche’s apparent unwillingness to make changes to an underpowered first team and blood some of the new signings has not helped either.
But a fourth successive relegation battle is not inevitable. There is over 92 per cent — 35 of the 38 games — of the season still to go, and there was enough in the first 87 minutes against Bournemouth last time out to suggest they can improve.
With tricky trips to Aston Villa and Leicester City coming in the first two matches after this international break, though, things could well get worse before they get better.
(Top photos: Getty Images)
