How reliable are Premier League opening weekend narratives come the end of the season?

A year ago, Britain was in full mad-for-it Oasis mode.

Sixteen years after the band’s breakup, Liam and Noel Gallagher had finally reformed. They had played a string of shows in the United Kingdom to huge acclaim and were about to take the tour global. Almost everyone had something to say about the tour — aside from the brothers themselves.

Presumably saving themselves for the upcoming documentary about the reunion, neither agreed to any interviews throughout the tour — with one exception. Noel happily went on UK radio station Talksport because he wanted to discuss Manchester City’s opening game of the season, a 4-0 thrashing of Wolverhampton Wanderers. The only on-the-record quotes about Oasis’ reunion, therefore, were sandwiched between his thoughts about City.

“I was amazed at how good and fluid it looked,” he said. “The new lad, Tijjani Reijnders, looked amazing. The ‘keeper (James Trafford) looks solid, Rayan Ait-Nouri looked great, Rayan Cherki looked great coming off the bench. No one’s talking about Oscar Bobb, who was as big a miss for us as anything last season. He was brilliant. So all the signs are good.”

Reijnders looked the business against Wolves in the August sunshiiiiine (Alex Pantling/Getty Images)

Reijnders has since been shipped off to Al Qadsiah after an underwhelming campaign. Bobb was sold to Fulham midway through the campaign. Trafford was relegated to a backup status and has also departed.

It’s a reminder that first-day impressions can often be misleading: City eventually fell short, and Pep Guardiola left after a decade in charge. This season there has been no shortage of excitement or panic after a lively opening weekend. So what other nonsense did we think after the opening game of last season, and indeed previous seasons?

2025-26

Well, Tottenham Hotspur looked particularly good in a 3-0 victory over Burnley. Coming shortly after a commendable performance in a UEFA Super Cup defeat to Paris Saint-Germain, the Thomas Frank era started positively. Come the end of the season, Frank had been sacked and Tottenham only just stayed up. In fairness to Tottenham supporters, even if the results were decent, they never seemed convinced by the new regime.

In turn, it seemed like Brentford might struggle without Frank. In Keith Andrews’ first game as a manager, Brentford were 3-0 down to Nottingham Forest by half-time, eventually losing 3-1. New Forest signing Dan Ndoye was particularly impressive down the right, scoring the second. It was the only league goal he scored all season. Brentford ended up challenging for Europe, and striker Igor Thiago finished as the league’s second-top goalscorer.

Granted, not everything was misleading. Arsenal won 1-0 at Manchester United courtesy of a set piece, and Liverpool looked far too open in a 4-2 win over Bournemouth, for whom Antoine Semenyo starred.

2024-25

Manchester United have their new centre-forward! Joshua Zirkzee’s well-taken winner after coming off the bench for his debut provided the only goal in the 1-0 victory over Fulham. Unfortunately, Zirkzee would only manage to score in one other game that season: hitting two in a 4-0 win over Everton. Two years on, it’s surprising he’s still around.

Joshua Zirkzee scores a debut goal for Manchester United (Michael Regan/Getty Images)

Another false dawn was Manchester City’s bright start in a 2-0 win over Chelsea, without the man who had just been named player of the tournament at Euro 2024, Rodri. Clearly, City wanted him back in the side quickly. But if this was taken as a sign they could play without him, the season-ending injury he suffered in October quickly disproved this. City badly struggled in his absence, with Guardiola experiencing the worst run of form in his managerial career.

2023-24

Aston Villa travelled up to Newcastle and were smashed 5-1, which cast doubts upon their ability to challenge for the Champions League places.

Unless, as it happens, you were Sir Alex Ferguson. When interviewed the next day on NBC, the former Manchester United manager was asked which matches he had watched. “I watched Aston Villa vs Newcastle, and I can’t believe the scoreline,” Ferguson said. “Honestly, Aston Villa played fantastic football and just lost bad goals. It’s a surprising game, football. You can play teams off the pitch and not score. That’s what Aston Villa did.”

Sure enough, they ended the season in fourth, their highest finish since 1996. The most successful manager in the Premier League era knows not to read too much into the opening weekend’s results.

Villa were soundly beaten at St James’ Park, then ended the season in fourth place (Robbie Jay Barratt/Getty Images)

2022-23

The universal reaction to Manchester United’s 2-1 home defeat to Brighton & Hove Albion, courtesy of two Pascal Gross goals, was that there had been no signs of progress in Erik ten Hag’s first game in charge. Lisandro Martinez was under scrutiny for his lack of height. Ten Hag’s decision to leave out Cristiano Ronaldo raised eyebrows. “The result’s disappointing — the worst possible start,” said defender Harry Maguire.

But this was ultimately a positive season for United, after their wretched end to the previous season under Ralf Rangnick. They finished third in the league and reached both domestic cup finals, winning the Carabao Cup. Ten Hag won the war with Ronaldo, who left midway through the season. His faith in Martinez was rewarded, as the Argentinian was arguably United’s player of the season.

Granted, Ten Hag wasn’t around for long — but this Brighton defeat came at the start of United’s best season, in terms of points, in the last eight.

2021-22

After all, the previous season had started so positively for Manchester United. They thrashed Leeds 5-1, with Paul Pogba collecting a Premier League record four assists. United were in business. Pogba was back to his best after an excellent European Championship for France, but he only managed another five assists in the subsequent 37 games — not that he started more than 15 himself — and United slumped to sixth.

Manchester City got off to a poor start, going down 1-0 to Tottenham, who felt like their bogey side around this period. They would nevertheless go on to win the league, and that result was really treated more as a positive for Tottenham under new management. “It was a good day,” said Nuno Espirito Santo afterwards. “The distances, the covering, the balance, the fight. Very proud.” He won August’s first manager of the month award, and yet was only in charge of Tottenham for 10 league games.

A win over Manchester City was not a sign of things to come for Nuno at Spurs (Michael Regan/Getty Images)

Incidentally, man of the match for his superb defensive display against the reigning champions was right-back Japhet Tanganga. “He’s pacy, he’s great in one-on-ones, he was no-nonsense, he didn’t get closed down and put himself under pressure,” said Stephen Warnock on Match of the Day. “I thought he was brilliant.”

Here at The Athletic, we pondered whether his performance had saved Tottenham £20m. Sadly, Tanganga was then sent off three games later against Crystal Palace and was barely seen again in the Premier League amid injury problems.