Do starts to the season mean anything? Can we predict where a team will end up after four matches?

Apparently we can do, because after Arsenal’s first three results (a win, a draw, and a defeat as I am sure you will remember) the season was considered by some to be “all over”. The chance of winning the league had gone, and Wenger ought to be sacked.

Of course every Arsenal supporter would prefer to have Man City’s total number of points rather than our current clutch, but winning the opening games is not a guarantee of winning the league. It can happen like that, but it is not certain.

Indeed moderate starts can turn into rather exciting seasons. Take 1997/8 which began with three draws and two wins in the first five – hardly the stuff of champions. But that is what Arsenal became that season, they won the league, and the FA Cup.

Go back to the famous first Double of 1971 and you will find Arsenal kicked off with two draws, two wins and a defeat in the first five. Worse, at the end of September Arsenal lost 5-0 to Stoke.

Can you imagine what the atmosphere on the blogs and in the newspaper columns would be like after that? Had you told anyone that Arsenal would go on and win the league then they would have laughed at you – as well as insulting you at the same time!

The point is that most seasons clubs get difficult moments. Those moments can come at the start, or two thirds of the way through, or even in the last few games when all that is needed is one more victory, which simply won’t come.

In short, trying to measure a club’s success by what happens in the opening four matches of a season isn’t really that reliable an approach to predictions.

Unfortunately, nor is looking back to the previous season much of a guide either.

This is how the season before last finished

and here is last season’s final table

Some differences we can explain – like Liverpool losing Suarez and finding that the various replacements they bought were not up to his standard – but would anyone have suggested that the two teams with such dominant attacking strengths would slip back so dramatically?

I think a lot of us said that Suarez’ loss would hurt Liverpool. But enough to reduce a goal tally of 101 to 52? I don’t think most people predicted that.

Or try this one. Last season Chelsea scored two more goals than Arsenal. So would that have led you to say that Arsenal needed to replace their centre forward?

My suggestion is probably not. What most reasonable people would say, looking at those statistics, would be that Arsenal’s goals for and against were not that dissimilar from Chelsea’s. And yet Chelsea got 12 more points than Arsenal. So Arsenal needed primarily to transform the results of close games, to their favour. In other words transfer some draws into wins, and four defeats into draws.

Arsenal had four single goal defeats last season. If they’d managed to draw each of those games then that would, quite obviously have been four points better off. If we now add in the draws we find that Arsenal drew nine games last season.. If four of those had found Arsenal scoring one more goal, then Arsenal would have gained the same number of points as Chelsea, and almost certainly had a slightly better goal difference.

On this basis what is needed is a little bit more assertiveness in the marginal games. And indeed this is what Arsenal had in the second half of the season with the arrival of Coquelin.

His ranking for interceptions in the top European leagues is third. He is sixth for successful tackles across all those same leagues (being beaten by players from Ligue 1 where tactics are different).

Over the period he played last season Coquelin made 82 tackles. Nemanja Matic made 70 tackles Fernandinho made 71.

Now let me try and pull this together. We have a defensive midfielder who is just about the best in Europe, and we scored within a handful of goals that Chelsea got last season. And so what is everyone asking for? A defensive midfielder and a centre forward!

But, I hear people cry, we are slipping further and further behind Man City. We have played four games and our so-called central attacking players have only scored one goal. The other two were own goals. That proves we need a new centre forward. Coquelin nearly got sent off at Palace – we need a more stable defensive midfielder!

In fact, it doesn’t show this at all. It proves football is a variable and complex game in which at any moment most teams are engaged in odd runs. The big problem comes when one reacts to events surrounding a short run of results, and so takes short term measures to sort things out.

Arsenal won eight consecutive matches last season, and only faded towards the end when it was clear that they were not going to catch Chelsea, and when there was the retention of the FA Cup to focus on. Is that a team that is falling apart, and utterly useless?

And if it wasn’t then, why is it now?

The answer is simple: because we are looking at a short run of four games in which we have two wins, one draw and one defeat. And if you want to push the matter further one could add that in the draw we scored a goal that was onside, but given off side, and in the Newcastle win, had an absolutely clear penalty in our favour not given.

The fact is the smaller, and smaller the sample number of games, the less reliable the results. And to prove my point what I can do is give you the results across the first four games of various seasons and see where they lead.

1970/71 – two draws, two wins
1977/78 – two draws, two wins
2001/02 – two wins, one draw, one defeat.

And of course you will know what those three seasons had in common – we won the Double each time.

I have no clear idea what will happen next, except for one thing. Arsenal will challenge for trophies, and just like last season, and the season before, most of the people who are calling for Arsene Wenger’s head will shut up, as we win things, and then at the team’s first stumble thereafter, will start up with the moaning again.

Whether Arsene Wenger pulls off another deadline day coup remains to be seen with his only acquisition so far being Petr Cech from Chelsea who will almost certainly prove to be a shrewd signing but will he be enough to mean a serious opportunity to win the Premier League.