Just 4 Weeks In, Premier League’s Establishment Squashing Notion of New Norm

The main event was still a week away, and this was only the curtain-raiser, but inside Wembley Stadium, a banner emblazoned with only two words hit the right tone: “We’re back.” Depicted beside them in red, white and black was Zlatan Ibrahimovic, and the longer you looked at them, the stronger the message became; not just “we’re back,” but “we’reeeee baaaaaaaaack.”

If Manchester United looked and felt like United again, Ibrahimovic was a big reason why. He had brought the box-office swagger back with him, as had Jose Mourinho. In the days that would follow, Paul Pogba would arrive to complete the picture, those two little words saying it all.

And yet they didn’t just feel restricted to United.

Even before a ball had been kicked in the Premier League, those who constitute the division’s establishment had a certain look about them that was significant for the fact it hadn’t been there recently. In addition to United, Manchester City had a renewed buzz, the Pep Guardiola effect all-consuming; Chelsea looked to be regaining their identity; Liverpool’s collective idea was strengthening.

Those two words felt applicable to all of them, and it’s why August’s Community Shield contained a symbolic element.

After a Premier League season in which convention was discarded, the meeting between Leicester City and United at Wembley pitted the emblem of a theorised new order against the leaders of the established one. It was a game that felt detached in a way, suspended between two seasons, glancing back at one and peering ahead to another.

It wouldn’t tell us everything, but it would say something about the season we’d come from, and the weeks that have followed have continued to do so. United won that day and have largely carried on that way since; City and Chelsea have done the same; the other contenders are just behind them.

That banner: It had it bang on.

As Leicester smashed through every supposed ceiling last season to claim the most historic of titles, the most intriguing question in a wider sense became whether Claudio Ranieri’s side represented an aberration or whether they were forerunners for a new norm.

In a season of turbulence or chaos between the classes, they’d redefined what was possible through clever buying, brilliant scouting and tactical clarity. It pointed to the potential of a paradigm shift—almost mobilising a movement, if you like.

The Premier League’s landscape was important here, too.

Following the signing of an £8 billion TV rights deal, England’s top division was entering a new financial world in which many of the old rules would no longer apply. From top to bottom, everyone was having …

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