How quickly the narrative can turn against you.
Manchester City had looked ominously good since their opening day defeat to Tottenham, scoring 12 goals in four successive wins, but even throughout that run one suspected the real test of their character was still to come.
The style of Pep Guardiola’s meticulously prepped football means that once a team yields, or gets the basic shape wrong, thrashings come easy. Their campaign will not be decided by those games. It will be decided by results like Saturday's 0-0 draw with Southampton.
City were pretty wretched. They failed to record a single shot on target until the 92nd minute when Phil Foden’s header was brilliantly saved, before Raheem Sterling’s finish on the rebound was called offside.
They passed carelessly and slowly, as awkward, lost, and dependent on the flair of individuals as a Guardiola team in its early transitional period. Or to put it another way, they looked like Mikel Arteta’s Arsenal.
The only real outlet was Jack Grealish, busy down the left for the first half at least but - as he persistently dribbled to the byline, cutting back for no-one in particular - ultimately symbolising the strangely bereft nature of the City performance.
Clearly, Guardiola was made to pay for leaving Kevin de Bruyne on the bench and for playing without a genuine centre forward yet again. First Sterling had a go but touched the ball 20 times in the first half. Gabriel Jesus, swapped with Sterling at the break, had four touches before he was hauled off in the 67th minute.
Manchester City need a striker. That is the simple - the painfully obvious - analysis we must take from a game like this, although the problem with their performance does go a little deeper, adding weight to the theory that as pre-pandemic football returns so will the flaws in Guardiola’s team.
Age catching up with Fernandinho
In November last year, right before a sudden surge of form (defined by slow possession) solved the empty-stadium problem, City had won 101 points from their previous 50 games.
The squad looked old. The players weren’t pressing cohesively, weren’t passing at the same tempo as before. It appeared as though the Guardiola era was winding down as a sluggish central midfield became too easy to pass through and counter-attack behind.
The issues disappeared when the pandemic shifted the very aesthetic of Premier League football but as it moves back again we find Man City back there again, punished perhaps for not attempting to fix these long-term concerns.
Having no out-and-out number nine might be overcome by creativity elsewhere in the team. But relying on Fernandinho in central midfield, and attempting to play with renewed energy after five long years under their demanding head coach, won’t be so easy to fix outside a transfer window.
Saints deserve credit
Southampton were superb, it should be said. The way Ralph Hasenhuttl’s team pressed hard onto the City defenders, forcing numerous mistakes, ensured the hosts were never allowed to settle.
The VAR-overturned penalty Saints were awarded in the second half was a perfect example as Kyle Walker, gesturing in frustration for a passing option, dallied for too long and was caught in possession.
This was the story of the game: Southampton’s excellent press and compression of space through midfield forcing City into awkwardly acute passes.
All good teams have off days and had De Bruyne started City may have gradually been able to work through the Southampton midfield. But the Belgian’s presence would not have prevented the frequency with which Fernandinho was overwhelmed and the alarming ease with which Saints could play simple vertical passes through the lines.
An ambling City in a spaced-out formation left a yawning chasm between their defence and midfield lines, with a half-hearted press allowing Southampton to pick out the ball. On another day, they would have scored a couple.
It was the archetypal tactical flaw of a hard-pressing system; once the energy wanes, the inherent risks of it are brutally exposed.
Tiredness, either physically or psychologically, took hold of the City players here. It looked an awful lot like the defeat to Spurs and an awful lot like the City of autumn 2020.
They now have ten points from five games. This might have been a pivotal early moment in the title race.
Nothing new from Norwich
Five games into the new season and we have a pretty good grasp on what Norwich, Brentford, and Watford will be bringing to the table. Saturday was a particularly critical day for all three.
Daniel Farke’s side already look finished. They have zero points from their opening five games and after a comprehensive defeat to Watford at Carrow Road - on paper, one of the easiest matches of the season - appear to be exactly the same as the team we saw in 2019/20.
This Norwich was supposed to be more streetwise, more defensively secure, but instead Farke has again gone for a ludicrously adventurous system that works at Sky Bet Championship level but leaves far too much space for Premier League level.
Norwich fan out in attack, expanding themselves and rarely contracting, and so, predictably, Ismaili Sarr found lots of space on the counter-attack. He dominated the game with two goals and five completed dribbles, while on the left Emmanuel Dennis was almost as effective.
Sitting back and breaking quickly down the flanks: this is Watford’s consistent game plan and it’s working well enough to suggest they will stay in the top flight.
As for Brentford, they were once again aggressive and confident in possession, deservedly beating Wolves in the early kick-off thanks to another sensational performance from Ivan Toney.
Thomas Frank’s side, like Sheffield United two years ago, have shown enough quality in the opening five rounds to suggest they can push towards the top half.