Arsenal are perfect. Nobody else looks it. Four games in, the Premier League's early table is a diagnostic chart, and Liverpool, Chelsea and Tottenham are all showing symptoms that no international break is going to cure.
Saturday gave us three home draws with three very different causes. Liverpool 0-0 Fulham. Chelsea 2-2 Hull City. Tottenham 0-0 Everton. Same result column, three separate stories, and none of them the kind you shrug off as a bad weekend.
Liverpool: legs, or something worse
Anfield went home flat, and Andoni Iraola went to the podium with the honest excuse and the uncomfortable one. The honest one: his side had 60-something hours between a Champions League tie against Atletico Madrid and kick-off, and there was, in his phrase, a lack of freshness he wasn't going to pretend didn't exist. The uncomfortable one, delivered in the same breath: Liverpool need to do better offensively.
Both can be true. Only one is fixable by a Tuesday off. The draw was Liverpool's third in their opening four league games, which is not a rhythm problem. That's a pattern. Whether it's rotation, chemistry between the new attacking pieces, or something more stubborn, the manager himself is already flagging it in September. That's the tell.
Chelsea: the same wound, reopened
Alonso didn't hide from it. "We got what we deserved," he told reporters after the Hull draw, adding that his side needed to be more solid, more controlled, and that new players and new staff meant the fix was a matter of months, not weeks.
It's a nice line. It also elides how long this has been going on. Chelsea have not kept a clean sheet in 20 league games, a run Read Chelsea called a persistent structural problem at the back. Twenty. That predates Alonso's tenure, predates half his squad, and it's the sort of number that stops being a phase and starts being an identity.
The tactical read matches the vibe. Alonso's 3-4-2-1 has produced eight goals in four games, per Total Football Analysis, but it's exposing a rest-defence problem and gaps down the left. Translation: when Chelsea have the ball, they look expensive. When they lose it, they look like they've never met each other. Two goals up should not be a hazard state. For this Chelsea, it keeps being one.
Tottenham: £300m and a mental block
Then there's Spurs, who are having the kind of September that gets managers fired in November. Four league games, no goals, 407 minutes without one, per Yonhap. The first time in the club's history they've failed to score in four straight to open a season. Roberto De Zerbi was booed off and apologised to the fans afterwards, saying the reaction was normal.
The list of explanations De Zerbi offered is long enough to be its own problem: injuries from a pre-season tour to New Zealand and Australia, the knock-on effects of the World Cup on player return dates, late window signings including Sávio and Omar Marmoush, and, in his words, a mental block from four games without a win or a goal. He also admitted the shape of the performance itself was broken: Spurs got into the Everton box 74 times and didn't shoot enough, with too many wrong decisions in the final third.
All of that after a summer in which Tottenham reportedly spent over £300 million on ten signings. You can absorb a slow start when the squad is unchanged and the manager is second-year. You cannot absorb one when the wage bill just doubled and the fans are already booing in September.
Three clubs, three different diagnoses, one shared truth: the excuses are already tactical, not circumstantial. Liverpool are tired and thin up top. Chelsea can't defend a lead and haven't been able to for a year. Spurs bought a new team and forgot to bring a striker's brain.
Arsenal, meanwhile, keep winning. Somebody in North London is enjoying this weekend very much.
