The cliché used to be that the league table takes shape after 10 games. If everything happens faster these days, the standings after eight look like a guide to how they will look after 38. Chelsea are 11th and Crystal Palace ninth but were they to swap positions, then the eventual top 10 may already be in situ, if not necessarily in the positions they will eventually occupy. The current bottom five could be the sides in the scrap to survive: they include all three promoted clubs, with two of them below the dotted line. The teams in the relative obscurity of 12th-15th might be destined for lower mid-table.
So far, so predictable? Not entirely. If Ange Postecoglou appears a one-man rebuttal of Antonio Conte, taking a Tottenham team shorn of Harry Kane to the top of the table while eschewing his predecessor’s self-defeating negativity, the surprise package at the summit highlight a wider and more welcome theme. There might just be a title race.
