If it looks good on day one, brace yourself

There is nothing like the Premier League's opening weekend to stoke euphoria or provoke panic. A 4-0 win, a 3-0 stroll, an eye-catching debut — within 90 minutes the entire narrative of the coming season appears settled. History, however, suggests we should resist the urge to write the script in August.

Take Manchester City at the start of last season. In the aftermath of a 4-0 thrashing of Wolverhampton Wanderers, none other than Noel Gallagher — in his one exception to his reunion tour media blackout — popped up on Talksport to gush about the champions' new-look side.

"I was amazed at how good and fluid it looked," he said. "The new lad, Tijjani Reijnders, looked amazing. The 'keeper (James Trafford) looks solid, Rayan Ait-Nouri looked great, Rayan Cherki looked great coming off the bench. No one's talking about Oscar Bobb, who was as big a miss for us as anything last season. He was brilliant. So all the signs are good."

Twelve months on, Reijnders has been shipped off to Al Qadsiah after an underwhelming campaign, Bobb was sold to Fulham midway through the season, Trafford was relegated to backup duties and has since departed. City ultimately fell short, and Pep Guardiola left after a decade in charge. Day-one impressions, as ever, were profoundly misleading.

Last season: Tottenham roared, Brentford stumbled

This season's opening weekend was no different. Tottenham Hotspur looked particularly slick in a 3-0 win over Burnley, on the back of a commendable UEFA Super Cup performance against Paris Saint-Germain, and the Thomas Frank era began brightly. Come the end of the campaign, however, Frank had been sacked and Tottenham only just stayed up — even if supporters were never entirely convinced.

In turn, it seemed Brentford might be the ones to suffer without Frank. In Keith Andrews' first game as a manager, they were 3-0 down to Nottingham Forest by half-time and eventually lost 3-1, with new signing Dan Ndoye impressing down the right and scoring the second — the only league goal he scored all season. Yet Brentford ended up challenging for Europe, and striker Igor Thiago finished as the league's second-top scorer.

Granted, not everything on opening weekend was fiction. Arsenal's 1-0 win at Manchester United from a set piece foreshadowed their season, while Liverpool looked far too open in a 4-2 win over Bournemouth, for whom Antoine Semenyo starred.

Zirkzee's bright Manchester start, City's Rodri bounce

Rewind to 2024-25, and Manchester United had their new centre-forward. Joshua Zirkzee scored a well-taken winner from the bench on his debut in a 1-0 defeat of Fulham — only to score in one other game all season, twice, in a 4-0 win over Everton. Two years on, it is surprising he is still around.

That same opening weekend brought a false dawn in Manchester too, as City beat Chelsea 2-0 without the man named player of the tournament at Euro 2024, Rodri. If City fans took that as proof they could cope without him, Rodri's season-ending October injury quickly disproved it: City badly struggled in his absence, with Guardiola experiencing the worst run of form in his managerial career.

Sir Alex's clairvoyance and Ten Hag's reality check

Go back to 2023-24, where Aston Villa were hammered 5-1 at Newcastle and cast doubted on their European ambitions. Most wrote them off — but not Sir Alex Ferguson. Asked the next day on NBC which matches he had watched, the former Manchester United manager was adamant: "I watched Aston Villa vs Newcastle, and I can't believe the scoreline," he said. "Honestly, Aston Villa played fantastic football and just lost bad goals. It's a surprising game, football. You can play teams off the pitch and not score. That's what Aston Villa did."

Sure enough, Villans ended the season fourth — their highest finish since 1995. The most successful manager in the Premier League era knew not to read too much into the opening weekend.

A year earlier, in 2022-23, Manchester United's 2-1 home defeat to Brighton & Hove Albion from two Pascal Gross goals was read as proof of no progress from Erik ten Hag. Lisandro Martinez was scrutinised for his height, and Ten Hag's choice to leave out Cristiano Ronaldo raised eyebrows. "The result's disappointing — the worst possible start," said defender Harry Maguire.

It proved, ultimately, a positive season: United finished third and won the Carabao Cup, with Ronaldo departing midway through and Martinez arguably the player of the season. Granted, Ten Hag wasn't around long — but the defeat came at the start of the club's best season, by points, in eight years.

The final proof: Pogba's four-assist illusion

Perhaps the most classic opening-weekend mirage came in 2021-22. Manchester United hammered Leeds 5-1, with Paul Pogba collecting a Premier League-record four assists. United were in business. Pogba, coming off an excellent European Championship, managed just five more assists in the subsequent 37 games, and United slumped to sixth.

City began with a 1-0 defeat at Tottenham, who felt like their bogey side around this period — and yet they comfortably as many the league. Nuno Espirito Santo, new in charge at Spurs, was "very proud": "The distances, the covering, the balance, the fight." He won August's manager of the month and was gone after 10 league games. The man-of-the-match that day, Japhet Tanganga, was so good that we pondered whether his display had saved Tottenham £20m — only for him to be sent off three games later and barely seen in the Premier League again.

The lesson of the opening weekend, season after season, is consistent: enjoy the spectacle, but don't commission the trophy engraver just yet.