Why it would be imprudent to make definite conclusions about your Premier League team at this moment – Top

Naturally, we all get excited when a new season begins, as we are often eager to spot any patterns that emerge from the early weeks.

Are Tottenham Hotspur already transformed under Ange Postecoglou? Do the newly promoted sides look doomed already? Are West Ham United… good again?

Tactically, we can pull out some interesting trends in these opening few episodes of a season, but from a data perspective, extracting signal from the noise after four games (and just three in a couple of cases) is not quite as easy.

GO DEEPER

Why we shouldn’t reach any conclusions this early in the season

If nothing else, please make us a promise. Do not look at the Premier League table when looking to draw any conclusions at this stage. If we are going to seek out narratives on a certain club, we need to surround it with the context it deserves.

Let’s take Newcastle United as an example. Eddie Howe’s men have lost three games on the bounce since their emphatic 5-1 victory over Aston Villa on the opening weekend.

Should Newcastle fans be concerned? No, not really.

Why? Well, the fixture schedule has not been their friend at all so far.

Statistically speaking, Opta’s Power Rankings — a global ranking system containing more than 13,000 clubs rated between zero (lowest) and 100 (highest) — show that no team has faced more difficult opponents than Newcastle in their opening four games this season.

Without even considering the context of the games themselves — including a stubborn 10-man Liverpool adapting their game plan to frustrate Newcastle — matches against four of last season’s final top seven is a tough start for any side.

Using home-and-away weightings to adjust Opta’s rankings for the venues involved, we can plot how difficult each team’s start to the 2023-24 Premier League season has been. Yes, looking at averages after 10 per cent of a 38-game campaign is rudimentary — but if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.

Elsewhere, promoted Burnley’s tricky start also sees them possess a quirk of their own.

After their Matchweek 2 game away to fellow newcomers Luton Town was postponed because of building work at the latter’s Kenilworth Road ground, the fixture schedule has seen them play three straight Premier League matches at home — just the fourth side to do so after Everton, Newcastle and Wimbledon all did it in 1997-98.

At the other end of the scale, Manchester City’s trips to Burnley and Sheffield United have helped them set the pace with some comparably favourable fixtures to start.

Sure, early season games away to promoted sides can be potential banana skins, but the opportunity to play two of the three teams that were down in the Championship six months ago is an itinerary most managers would relish in the early stages of the campaign.

Contrastingly, Everton have had the third-easiest opening to the season per Opta’s rankings, crafting some good attacking opportunities along the way. However, failing to score a single goal in the first three matches against Fulham, Aston Villa and Wolverhampton Wanderers could be viewed as opportunities missed after a kind schedule — Everton have only one point to show for their four games so far.

However you look at it, fixture schedules can often dictate the momentum felt within a club — particularly in this early part of the season. 

Call it ‘season state’, call it what you want, but it is an important factor to consider when appraising how your team is performing.

Bucketing these opponent rankings evenly into ‘easy’, ‘medium’ or ‘hard’ fixtures, we can visualise the schedule each team has had in their opening four (or three if you are Luton or Burnley) games.

With that in mind, let’s look forward to each side’s games until we reach Matchweek 10 — when similarly the table is unlikely to have truly settled down but gives us a nice line in the sand.

Per Opta’s Power Rankings, Sheffield United have the toughest schedule over the next six fixtures, which may compound their early season struggles having only picked up a solitary point from their first four games.

The looming meetings with Tottenham, Newcastle, Manchester United and Arsenal will not define their season, but having such tricky matches in a short space of time might leave them playing catch-up before a third of it has been played.

At the other end of the scale, fellow new boys Luton have the opportunity to use their upcoming games to build some positive momentum, with a trip to Everton sandwiched between visits from Wolves and Burnley over the next four weekends.

Elsewhere, keep an eye on the respective schedules for Manchester United and Chelsea, as both sides have the chance to build a winning streak. No game is genuinely easy in the Premier League, of course, but the output from the fixture computer means neither of them play anyone from last season’s final top five in their next four outings.

Chelsea may well start to click into gear under new coach Mauricio Pochettino after this international break, but just consider the opposition they are playing as they rack up those points when trying to extrapolate far into the future.

It’s a long old season, people.

GO DEEPER

Chelsea and Everton might be better than you think

Finally, we come back to Newcastle.

Across the next six fixtures, they are the only Premier League team to not play an opponent under the ‘hard’ difficulty bracket.

Granted, their Champions League campaign kicks off with meaty clashes against AC Milan, Paris Saint-Germain and Borussia Dortmund — there’s also a Carabao Cup last-32 trip to Manchester City within that — all before they go to Wolves on October 28, but the Premier League itinerary looks to have been kinder to them compared with their opening four games.

It feels like you have picked up the bottom line by now.

Fixture schedules can dictate narratives in the short term. They can influence momentum within the club and among the fanbase. They can even cost managers their jobs in some cases.

With that in mind, it is important to zoom out from the small sample of performances and ensure any conclusions made about a team’s form are grounded in a wider context.

In the meantime, until everyone has played each other twice, the league table can be a misleading source to draw from.

GO DEEPER

Will Sancho return? Are Spurs the real deal? Key questions as Premier League starts again

(Top photos: Getty Images)