International breaks have made this a stuttering start to the English Premier League season. With more than a quarter of matches now completed though, the balance of forces is starting to come into clearer focus.
Of the six clubs with genuine, if in some cases remote, title aspirations, Manchester United – with three defeats already and only 50% of matches won – are in the lowest position in the table.
For me, David Moyes’s Red Devils look, nonetheless, to be the most likely winners of the 2013-14 Premier League title.
The club has just experienced the end of an incomparable managerial era, so a tentative start was to be expected; and the international breaks, with most of the first-team squad absent, may well have slowed the inevitable acclimatisation process for new manager and players.
Momentum, though, is now gathering, as demonstrated most ominously for their rivals by the 22 minutes it took for them to rip Martin Jol’s Fulham apart.
They have strength and experience where it counts: Nemanja Vidić is, along with Vincent Kompany of Manchester City, the league’s most commanding central defender; in midfield, Michael Carrick is perennially underrated; up front, Robin van Persie and Wayne Rooney look well capable of delivering 20 league goals each, with the latter adding a sudden maturity to the energy and innate vision that have always characterised his play.
After a long period when his strengths and weaknesses were regularly up for debate, goalkeeper David de Gea seems to have grown into the role; a new joker in the pack has emerged in Adnan Januzaj; and Antonio Valencia, a clinically effective wide man when on song, is returning to his best.
New arrival Marouane Fellaini will surely grow in influence and authority as the season progresses. If United could land Fellaini’s former team-mate Leighton Baines, they could be the complete title package – although the impressive start Everton have made under Moyes’s successor Roberto Martinez may make it harder to prise the left-back away.
The stars of a season’s early weeks frequently fade out long before the finale.
The prospects of north London rivals Arsenal and Tottenham Hotspur staying the course will be strengthened considerably if Aaron Ramsey and Andros Townsend are able to maintain their eye-catching early-season form.
Both clubs are likely to require the sort of incisive thrusts from midfield that these two have been contributing to complement the goals tally of their front-men if they are to mount sustained title challenges.
For top-of-the-table Arsenal, Santi Cazorla and Jack Wilshere have also chipped in with memorable goals, and the array of creative talent at Arsène Wenger’s disposal – Mesut Özil, Theo Walcott, Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, Serge Gnabry – is dazzling.
But do they have sufficient strength-in-depth defensively, or the resilience to grind out results when their offensive sorcery does not leave opponents spell-bound? The next two matches, away at Old Trafford and at home to high-pressing Southampton, should go some way to providing answers.
There is, by contrast, little doubt about the defensive solidity of this season’s much-changed Spurs squad, with the back-four protected by arguably the league’s strongest central midfield shield, and Hugo Lloris a top-quality goalkeeper.
Even with Icelander Gylfi Sigurdsson in fine scoring form, however, André Villas-Boas’s men are averaging less than a goal per Premier League game. This will need to increase significantly if they are to sustain a challenge for the top spot.
It is hard to shrug off the suspicion that the best days of several of Chelsea’s key personnel are behind them. And, while it is early in the season, I don’t yet sense that José Mourinho has quite re-established the truly exceptional bond with his playing staff that he achieved in his landmark first stint with the club from 2004.
That said, with players of balance, vision and touch such as Eden Hazard, Oscar and Juan Mata, the west London side are the only other team in the league capable of matching the mesmeric, one-touch, give-and-go football of Arsenal.
If Fernando Torres’s reinvigoration turns out to be enduring, Mourinho will be able to laugh off those suggesting the club shouldn’t have let loanee Romelu Lukaku and Daniel Sturridge go – and Chelsea won’t be far away. Willian, the exciting £30 million signing from Anzhi Makhachkala, may also come more into his own as the season progresses.
Manchester City have the power to be a real threat to their city rivals, whom they hammered 4-1 in September.
Yet, for all the attacking force that makes them comfortably the league’s top scorers, they can seem curiously dependent on a core of key players, principally Kompany, Pablo Zabaleta, Yaya Touré, Sergio Agüero and the out-of-form Joe Hart.
The Champions League campaign may be a real distraction this season and manager Manuel Pellegrini is new to the Premier League. For all these reasons, I think last season’s runners-up may again come up just short.
With Philippe Coutinho, Victor Moses and Raheem Sterling supplementing the front-line strike-force of Sturridge and Luís Suárez, Liverpool possess as much attacking menace as anyone.
The form, since his arrival from Sunderland, of Simon Mignolet has also been a real bonus.
But with manager Brendan Rogers often employing a 5-3-2 (or 3-5-2) formation, much responsibility tends to fall on central midfielders Steven Gerrard and Lucas both to protect the backline against forward-breaking midfield players, and to instigate moves that will bring their own front-men decisively into the action.
Against the better midfields, such as Arsenal on Saturday, who played Tomáš Rosicky and sitter Mikel Arteta as well as Cazorla, Özil and Ramsey, this can leave them overstretched.
There is no doubt the Merseysiders have been one of the most improved sides in the league this season and, with their inspirational front-players and no draining European fixtures, they could well challenge for a place in the top four.
I think they remain two or three players short of a potential title-winning combination, however.
David Owen worked for 20 years for the Financial Times in the United States, Canada, France and the UK. He ended his FT career as sports editor after the 2006 World Cup and is now freelancing, including covering the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the 2010 World Cup and London 2012. Owen’s Twitter feed can be accessed at www.twitter.com/dodo938