After our Villa win, the trend amongst TV and newspaper pundits seemed to be to say that we had now (twice) demonstrated an improvement over last season, because we were getting the 1-0 wins from games which might have been draws (or worse) last season.
Time will tell, of course.
However, last season Stoke finished 13th. Last season, we had home wins against 4 teams who finished 13th or higher. Admittedly 3 of them (Swansea, Norwich, Fulham) were thumping (and so, the pundits might argue, we did not show the tenacity required in the last 10 minutes when seeking to close out a 1-0).
Last season, Villa finished 15th. We had 4 away victories against teams in 15th or higher (including against Villa). Again, it is true to say that none of them were exactly 1-0. But then we did not lose any 1-0 either, and the only 1-1 was a game (Chelsea) in which we recovered from being behind rather than failed to cling on.
So not time to draw too many conclusions just yet, imho, (and I know that readers of this thread already fully understand that!!)
I dont think we will be top on Sunday night, although, of course, "all" we need to do is to win by a bigger score than Spurs beat Arsenal by.
Just as a preemptive strike against any optimistic forecasts if we do happen to be in the champions elect position going into the international break, the last time that we were top after our third game was ....
... in 2011/12.
Under Kenny, we drew one and won two, to top the table on Saturday 27 August 2011. (To be fair, we did drop to third on the Sunday).
