Slightly negative nancy here, but I think our start to the season has been....okay, if I'm being generous. Granted, the results are definitely better than the rock bottom doomsday scenarios many of us - me included, to a certain extent - predicted, but really not by much; definitely feel the Anfield 2-1 has done a lot of heavy-lifting to skew people's opinion to the positive side.
It's one thing if we were consistently playing well every game, and the results just didn't follow. But my issue is that pretty much every single game this season - win or lose - has been a bit of a coin toss, and fairly chaotic - not in a good way. In my view, the Sunderland and Brighton are the only two games I can confidently say, we played well, dominated from start to finish, and were fully deserving of the win, without any outside factors or slice of luck involved.
Every other game though, it's pretty much just come down to how the luck of bounce goes that particular day. What I mean is, despite us fully deserving the win against Burnley and being the better team throughout, we still needed a 97th minute penalty to defeat them. We weren't "lucky" per se, but a game that we should've been out of sight by half-time, came down to the last kick. Against Chelsea, we played well, but again, we'd be furious if we didn't, considering we were up against 10 men for about 70 minutes. And we still almost contrived to let them find a way back into the game. The Anfield win was massive, and this isn't to take away anything from the mental fortitude of the players (especially after Liverpool equalised), but once again, we were helped in no small part by Salah and Gakpo leaving their scoring boots at home - if Gakpo buries the most open headed chance he'll ever get, then the game ends 2-2, which is still not a disaster, but it definitely takes a bit of shine off the game.
Of course, the other side of the coin applies, too. We've not had the rub of the green in other games, where we've dropped points that we probably shouldn't have. We were better than Arsenal, and at least deserved a point. Fulham and Brentford games go completely different if Bruno converts his penalties. And we threw away two points at Nottingham Forrest in 90 seconds of madness just because Dalot forgot how to defend; even with his brain fade, we were one 95th minute clearance of the line away from getting the win.
So we've had "luck" both in our favour and also go against us. The general saying is that the "table doesn't lie" and that it generally evens itself out over the course of the season. It's still early days, and the table says we're eighth. Which sounds about right (maybe a little higher than our performances have warranted). My biggest issue is that we can dominate 90% of a game, but can just as easily implode in that 10% to throw away points, or erode our confidence. You can say that the consistency will come with time, once our new signings all find their feet, but nothing is guaranteed.
I think it's also important not to measure any progress against the absolute humiliation and bottom-dwelling awfulness of last season. I mean, we finished 15th, and were historically terrible every other week. When you're starting from rock bottom, and standards are at the pits, it's almost a given that you're going to be "better" the following season.
I personally predicted us finishing between 6th and 9th this season, and still think that's where we end up. But as always, will be the happiest humble pie eater if proven wrong, and own up to these knee-jerk comments come the end of the season.
