Crystal Palace Watch as Arsenal and Man City Open Early Lead

Four games into the new season and the Premier League table already has a different look to it. Arsenal and Manchester City have won every fixture put in front of them, and for everyone else Crystal Palace included, watching the League take shape from the outside of the top four the early gap already carries a familiar weight. History says starts like this rarely stay decorative for long.

For a Palace support used to sizing up the season from mid-table, the story at the summit is not really about who Palace face next. It is about how quickly the rest of the league can be expected to close a distance that, on paper, already looks significant with 34 games still to play.

Early Season Rift Opens as Arsenal and City Surge Ahead

Arsenal and Manchester City are the only two clubs in the Premier League with a maximum 12 points from their opening four matches, and both have done it with contrasting stories behind the identical return. Arsenal, the defending champions, set the tone before a ball was even kicked in the league by beating City 3-0 in the Community Shield, and have followed that up with wins over Coventry, Aston Villa, Chelsea and Sunderland, plus a Champions League victory against Napoli for good measure.

That run extends a nine-game winning streak in the league stretching back into last season. Arsenal’s last 90-minute defeat in any competition came against City themselves, back on 19 April, which underlines just how rare a genuine setback has become under Mikel Arteta.

City’s perfect start has arrived under new stewardship, with Pep Guardiola having departed after a decade at the club that yielded six Premier League titles, including a Treble, before Enzo Maresca took over the reins. Their four wins include a 1-0 victory over Manchester United built on an Erling Haaland goal that the Premier League’s refereeing body later admitted should have been ruled out for offside a rare official acknowledgement rather than mere conjecture from pundits.

For clubs like Palace, who continue to build their own identity under Crystal Palace F.C. Players (2026-27), the early pace being set at the top is a reminder of how unforgiving the division has become for anyone dropping points in August and September.

The Five-Point Gulf and the Unlikely Chasers

The numbers behind the gap are stark. Arsenal and City sit four points clear of third-placed Hull City, and five points clear of the rest of the Premier League. Hull’s presence in the top three is itself one of the division’s more eye-catching early developments, with the club well outperforming the pre-season expectations attached to most newly promoted sides.

Further down the table, the picture is bleaker for clubs with far grander ambitions. Manchester United sit 13th with just four points, matching their worst start to a Premier League season since 1992-93 a statistic that speaks to how far the club has drifted from the standards it once set. Michael Carrick took over at Old Trafford earlier in 2026 and is still navigating his first pre-season in charge, a period of transition that has clearly not yet translated into results.

Tottenham’s struggles have been just as pointed, if quieter in terms of table position. Spurs failed to score in any of their first four league matches of the season, a fact unprecedented in the club’s history. Roberto de Zerbi, like Carrick, is working through his first pre-season at a new club, and the goalless run raises obvious questions about how quickly that transition can be expected to bear fruit.

Elsewhere, the summer’s managerial merry-go-round continues to shape the division. Chelsea appointed Xabi Alonso and Liverpool turned to Andoni Iraola, two high-profile hires whose early-season form is being scrutinised as closely as the results themselves. Palace’s own preparations continue in parallel, with the club’s build-up detailed in the Crystal Palace v Ipswich Town match preview.

Historical Precedent and Managerial Reactions Examined

Context matters when assessing how much a four-game gap actually tells us about May. Of the 80 teams in the history of England’s top flight to win their opening four league games, only 24 went on to win the title that season. That is a conversion rate below one in three, a figure that should temper any assumption that four wins from four is already decisive.

The five-point margin specifically is where the picture becomes more forbidding for the chasing pack. Only two clubs in Premier League history have gone on to win the title after trailing the leaders by five points or more at this early stage of the season. It is not an impossible task, but it is one that has been managed only twice across more than three decades of the competition.

The managers involved have been candid in their own assessments of where things stand. Speaking after Arsenal’s win, Arteta offered a blunt reflection on the nature of the contest so far this season: “Today the game was unprotected”. It is a pointed remark from a manager whose side has faced little resistance in four matches, hinting at frustrations that extend beyond his own team’s results.

At Chelsea, Alonso has been equally direct in diagnosing his own side’s early defensive issues, describing their performance as simply “soft”. For a club that made one of the summer’s most notable managerial appointments, the honesty of that assessment suggests the new manager is under no illusions about the scale of the rebuilding job still required, even after wins are eventually found.

Can the Chasing Pack Overturn Historic Premier League Deficits?

What the numbers make clear is that four games is a genuine indicator without being a conclusive one. Arsenal and City have both been faultless, and the five-point gap to the rest of the division is real, but the historical record shows that leads of this size at this stage have been overturned before, however rarely.

For Manchester United and Tottenham in particular, the early damage is more about the manner of the results than the raw points total — a worst start in over three decades for United, and an unprecedented goalless run for Spurs. Both clubs are also working through first pre-seasons under new management, which adds further context to slow starts without excusing them entirely.

As the season lengthens, the question facing everyone outside the top two Palace included, as they continue building their own campaign is whether this is simply an early snapshot destined to blur as the fixtures pile up, or the first sign of a genuine two-horse race. The BBC Sport report on Premier League standings and manager comments makes clear the scale of the task facing the chasing pack. History suggests it is rare, not impossible, and that alone should keep every club below the top two paying close attention over the coming months.