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.

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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 their pockets loaded, mid- to lower-table clubs suddenly able to buy like never before, stopping in and leaving with goods from title contenders around Europe.

The result was a season in which "the others" became emboldened. Leicester were the poster boys of it all but were hardly alone, the league's elite caught unaware in a year of freneticism and helter-skelter football.

By March, the talk of a closed-shop European Super League reflected the unease among the heavyweights; their guarantees had been blown apart. As reported by Paul Doyle of the Guardian, representatives from United, City, Chelsea, Arsenal and Liverpool met with Charlie Stillitano, the chairman of Relevent Sports, a company interested in the Super League concept.

"You are afraid, you are not strong," Ranieri said of any club wanting to pursue such a thing. "... Maybe they have a good idea, but they should ask: 'Why is a little team like Leicester doing better than us?'"

It was a telling line, prompting a key question: Had Leicester and their equivalents created this, or had the league's big guns set the conditions for them?

Just four weeks into the current season, it's the latter that looks true.

A glance at the Premier League table shows City, Chelsea and United owning three of the top four spots already. Tottenham, Liverpool and Arsenal sit just behind them, with only Everton preventing the Big Six from occupying the top six.

A new norm? Dismissed.

To look back to where the likes of City, United and Chelsea were as recently as six months ago compared to now is to see that last season's volatility was created by their failures more than anything else.

At the Etihad Stadium, staleness was the overriding sensation of Manuel Pellegrini's final season, not helped by the announcement as early as February that Guardiola was coming. At Old Trafford, Louis van Gaal spent the campaign in a tiresome philosophical war, while the implosion of Mourinho at Stamford Bridge left Chelsea with Guus Hiddink, tasked with simply preventing the club from self-destructing.

As such, a sort of limbo set in at all of them. Regime changes were coming, and everyone knew it, creating temporary states of nothingness in each case in which innovation, tactical development and new thinking were nonexistent.

In that power vacuum, Leicester and Tottenham surged. They were the sides with clarity in their on-field identities, the absence of which elsewhere created a division of entertainment through unpredictability but one of questionable quality.

"That's the question people ask at the moment," Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger said halfway through the season. "Is this the worst league ever, or is it the best league ever?"

It was a question that reflected the sense of a shifting landscape, but now it no longer looks relevant. The Premier League appears to be returning to its previous calibration.

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At Manchester City, Guardiola is already exerting the influence that was expected of him. Though his side haven't yet been flawless, City have exhibited a sophistication that was previously absent, starting down a path in which points will be more reflective of talent, the Catalan's arrival having revitalised a club that was drifting.

At Chelsea, Antonio Conte's impact has been similar. The Blues have quickly recaptured some of the energy and bullishness that evaporated last term, and the Italian has a hand-in-glove feel about him in west London. You sense he gets Chelsea, and it's the same with Mourinho at United.

Along with Ibrahimovic and Pogba, the Portuguese has brought the lustre back to Old Trafford. There are systematic issues to work through, sure, but United feel like themselves again—big, bold, brash and unapologetic about it.

Elsewhere, Jurgen Klopp's Liverpool have a sense of progress about them. Mauricio Pochettino's Tottenham do, too, and Arsenal have at least broken their parsimonious existence.

More than anything, though, it's the collective snapping of stagnation that stands out. Tactical development is back, encompassing ideas are growing in strength, and you can see certainty in the direction being taken by those at the top.

That's not to say there can't be challengers, but if the potential of a paradigm shift had been there, it looks less so now. The indifference of the Premier League's heavyweights had created such a notion of possibility, and they've recognised it, the reaction swift.

As last season unfolded, the landscape of the league opened up the thought of Leicester being a forerunner for a new norm. But only four games in, this season is already telling us a lot about last.

That banner on show a week before it started looks to have had it right.

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