Spurs and Man City were Premier League bolters long before this Forest

Nottingham Forest find themselves third in the Premier League table after 10 games having already secured a win at Anfield while suffering only a City-and-Liverpool-matching solitary defeat of their own in racking up 19 points.

It all gives the league a pleasingly mid-90s vibe and suggests maybe Yer Da was right to stubbornly keep Forest in his ‘ideal proper Premier League line-up’ all through those long, difficult wilderness years. He’s still wrong about Sheffield Wednesday, though.

Makes you think, though, doesn’t it? What other teams have found themselves in an unexpectedly lofty position after 10 games of a Premier League season? Here are 10 of the very best.

10) Tottenham 02/03
After 10 games: 3rd, 19 points

Always worth remembering that the Big Six is a relatively recent phenomenon even by Premier League timeframes. Back in the distant, misty, far-off time of 2002/03, Spurs were actual for-real rubbish instead of the slightly more rarefied rubbish we’ve come to know and love over the last decade or so.

At that time, Spurs had never finished higher than seventh in the Premier League and hadn’t even managed that for seven years. Their most recent seasons had ended in 10th, 14th, 11th, 10th, 12th and ninth. They were proper mid-table slop.

In truth, the cracks appeared as early as game five because Spurs gonna Spurs. Having picked up 10 points from the first four games, Spurs were 2-0 up at Fulham midway through the second half and on course to really make a statement. Twenty-five minutes later they had, with Spursy inevitability, lost 3-2. But they still rallied to win three of their next five games and sit in what was then an incongruously lofty third spot.

What happened next? The team that had finished 10th, 14th, 11th, 10th, 12th and ninth in its previous six seasons reverted entirely to type and slumped back to a 10th-place finish which was at the time very much where they belonged. They won only three Premier League games after January.

9) Southampton 14/15
After 10 games: 2nd, 22 points

Southampton were at this time one of the most consistently fascinating teams in English football, with interesting coaches highlighting the talents of an array of exciting footballers only most of whom would end up at Liverpool.

Having finished a highly respectable eighth in 2013/14 it was perhaps not a total surprise to seem them start the 2014/15 season in such fine style, but they had lost Mauricio Pochettino to Spurs after just that one full season as manager as well as Rickie Lambert, Adam Lallana, Dejan Lovren, Luke Shaw and Calum Chambers.

A bit of transition under new manager Ronald Koeman appeared the best that could realistically be expected, especially after defeat on the opening day at Liverpool. Yet their only other defeat in the opening 12 games would come – gallingly, admittedly – at Pochettino’s Spurs.

In all, the Saints won eight of their first 11 games – taking a particular liking to visitors from the north east; Newcastle were beaten 4-0 and Sunderland 8-0 to leave Southampton behind only eventual champions Chelsea at the 10-game stage.

What happened next? Four straight defeats in late November and early December ended any unlikely title talk, but they didn’t disappear altogether.

A festive run of five wins in six lifted them briefly back to third and while the second half of the season proved tougher than the first they held on for a seventh-place finish and with it European football.

8) West Ham 15/16
After 10 games: 3rd, 20 points

Of course, we all know who the surprise package were in that memorable 2015/16 season. It was of course… wait, what? West Ham? Yes, West Ham. Pay attention. In a way it’s strangely fitting that the most off-kilter Premier League season doesn’t even throw up the obvious 10-game bolter.

Leicester at that time were merely fifth, with Spurs, the other team in that infamous two-horse race, a couple of points behind them in sixth. Man City and Arsenal were at that time the really quite dreary leaders on 22 points apiece with West Ham – fresh from a 12th-place finish the season before – the team at that time appearing best placed to do something improbable just two points behind.

Change was in the air at West Ham. Slaven Bilic had replaced Sam Allardyce in the dug-out, Mark Noble had completed the most seamless of captaincy transitions from Kevin Nolan, while it was the final ever season at what everyone agreed we would all weirdly pretend they had always been known as the Boleyn Ground.

The Hammers notched some significant scalps in those early games, with wins over Arsenal, Liverpool, Newcastle, Man City and Chelsea as well as defeats to Bournemouth and – more portentously than might have been imagined when it happened on August 15 – Leicester.

What happened next? West Ham won none of their next eight games, slipping from a high of second all the way down to tenth and out of the weirdest title race in modern history.

They lost only two of those eight games – at Watford and Spurs – but a run of three straight goalless draws in December was undeniably a bit of a buzzkill.

And it would be draws that cost them in the end. Fourteen of them in all meaning the Hammers could rally as high as only seventh despite losing only eight games all season. That was fewer defeats than City, United and Southampton directly above them in a Premier League table that had weirdness from top to bottom; Chelsea were famously tenth, Newcastle and Aston Villa were relegated.

West Ham in seventh doesn’t seem that incongruous in comparison, but they certainly played their part in contributing to the season’s overall bizarro world vibe.

7) Newcastle 11/12
After 10 games: 3rd, 22 points

Another one that requires us to forget current Premier League realities and cast our minds back to a dim and distant past. At the start of 2011 were within a handful of years either way of painful relegations, in 2009 and again in 2016. In the two seasons either side of 2011/12 they finished 12th and 16th. The current iteration of Newcastle may not quite be the one either the fans or new owners quite had in mind a couple of years ago, but it’s still a world away from one of which nothing much was expected at all in just their second season post-promotion.

Yet there they were, riding high in the top three and unbeaten after six wins and four draws in their first 10 games having won only two of their last 10 the previous season.

What happened next? As seems to be the case with a lot of these, it quickly went quite badly wrong before a significant rally. A run of four defeats in six winless games sent them tumbling down to seventh, but they would sink no lower.

They made a weird start to 2012 in which they picked up four wins in six games while losing the other two 5-2 and 5-0 at Fulham and Spurs, but with January signing Papiss Cisse making a fine start to life on Tyneside they won seven out of eight to remain right in the Champions League equation. The other game in that run was, of course, a 4-0 defeat at Wigan.

They finished fifth in the end, four points behind Spurs who were themselves memorably booted out of the Champions League by the antics of sixth-placed Chelsea.

6) Charlton 05/06
After 10 games: 2nd, 22 points

Charlton in the mid-noughties were a solid-enough mid-table team under Alan Curbishley and had finished 11th the previous season so this wasn’t entirely out of the blue but nobody was seriously predicting this kind of caper from them.

Darren Bent, plucked from Championship Ipswich, was the catalyst, scoring five goals in his first four Premier League games for the Addicks, all of which ended in victory.

What happened next? A rapid falling off, alas. The seven wins in those giddy first 10 games would end up accounting for more than half Charlton’s season-long total as they failed in the end to match even the previous season’s 11th place, fading all the way to 13th in what would prove to be Curbishley’s final season at The Valley.

5) Manchester City 07/08
After 10 games: 4th, 22 points

What would now constitute a worrying start for the perennial champions was barely 15 years ago the stuff of dreams. City had finished 15th and 14th in the two previous seasons but started the 2007/08 campaign brilliantly under new owner Thaksin Shinawatra and manager Sven-Goran Eriksson.

They were top of the table after a matchday-three Manchester derby win and recovered from a pair of 1-0 defeats at Arsenal and Blackburn to win four of the next five and clamber back into the top four.

What happened next? The very next game was a 6-0 defeat at Chelsea, but the true tailing off came in the new year. After beating Newcastle on January 2, City managed only four more wins in their remaining 17 games. Defeats in their last three games of the season – culminating in an 8-1 humbling at Middlesbrough – left City down in ninth when the music stopped.

It is a league table that now looks like something from an entirely different world, with the old Big Four duly filling the top four spots but City below Everton, Blackburn and Portsmouth with Spurs two places further back.

READ: Celebrating Sven-Goran Eriksson and the greatest football quote ever

4) Birmingham 03/04
After 10 games: 4th, 19 points

The 2003/04 season was Birmingham’s second in the Premier League, with consolidation the name of the game after a late rally had lifted them clear of relegation trouble and up to 13th in the end. The seven wins Birmingham managed in their final 11 games of 2002/03 proved a decent guide for what would transpire at the start of the following season.

Braced for another relegation battle, Steve Bruce’s side instead put paid to such talk almost instantly. They beat Tottenham on the opening day and by the end of September were proudly unbeaten with four wins and a couple of draws from their opening six games. An understandable if heavy defeat at Old Trafford put paid to the unbeaten start but draws against Chelsea and Villa steadied the ship before another win over Bolton.

What happened next? Birmingham lost four of the next five to drop out of the top four and back into mid-table. A chastening 4-1 defeat at Spurs in January 2004 was a sixth defeat in nine and dropped them all the way down to 10th.

They rallied again after that, though, embarking on an eight-match unbeaten run that lifted them all the way back to fifth by March only to run out of steam altogether on the final straight. They didn’t win a single game in April or May and duly finished the year where they had started it back in 10th.

3) Sunderland 99/00
After 10 games: 4th, 20 points

Sunderland’s previous attempt at Premier League football had ended in relegation in 1997 despite meeting the accepted 40-point target for survival. The following season they contrived not to get promoted despite mustering 90 points and decided it was then best to take no chances at all and duly racked up 105 points in 1998/99 to make damn sure of promotion.

It was a mightily impressive effort, but it was still very much not one expected to translate so instantly to top-flight success. But this was a Sunderland side powered by what remains the go-to example of the unstoppable powers of a big man-little man strike duo.

Kevin Phillips and Niall Quinn led Premier League defences a merry dance and despite losing two of their first four games, Sunderland were by the end of October nicely settled in the top three after a run of seven wins and two draws in nine games. Phillips at this point had 13 goals and Quinn five.

What happened next? A torrid start to 2000 halted all talk of Sunderland doing something truly remarkable. They didn’t win a game between Christmas and late March, but a late rally saw them claim seventh place, while Phillip’s 30-goal haul snagged the Golden Boot.

2) Nottingham Forest 94/95
After 10 games: 2nd, 24 points

Forest themselves have been here before. After finishing bottom of the first Premier League table in 92/93 – Brian Clough’s final season – a Stan Collymore-inspired Forest side had bounced straight back up under Frank Clark and continued that bounce with seven wins and three draws in their first 10 games back in the top flight.

A pair of 4-1 wins over Sheffield Wednesday and Tottenham were the highlights, with Collymore once again to the fore and ably assisted by your Lars Bohinens, Bryan Roys and Ian Woans as well as the odd typically thunderous Stuart Pearce penalty for good measure.

What happened next? A couple of bad runs did for them as title contenders, the first a run of four defeats in five in October and November and then five defeats in eight in the new year.

But while they weren’t part of the Man United-Blackburn title tangle they finished even stronger than they’d started, winning nine and drawing two of their final 11 games to clamber back up to third in the final reckoning.

1) Norwich 92/93
After 10 games: 1st, 23 points

Perhaps the very finest surprise start still comes from the Premier League’s first ever season. Having finished just two places and three points above the relegation zone in the final year before football was officially invented, Norwich set about the Premier League with great zest.

There wasn’t even a late rally in 91/92 to use as hindsight fuel here; they lost nine of their last 11 games in the old Division One and then sold striker Robert Fleck to Chelsea in the summer. Yet the Premier League was very much to their liking under new manager Mike Walker.

Fleck’s replacement Mark Robins made an instant impact in a stunning 4-2 win at Arsenal on the opening day, and August brought further successes against Chelsea, Crystal Palace and Forest. September brought three further wins and a draw at Coventry to lift a team tipped for relegation to the summit.

Game 11 brought a 7-1 thrashing at Blackburn, but we don’t have to talk about that now.

What happened next? Despite that thrashing being soon followed by a 4-1 mauling at Liverpool, Norwich played their part in what was for some time a three-way title fight against Manchester United and Villa. They ultimately faded to a still-impressive third, with that propensity for the defeats they did suffer being hefty ones resulting in them doing so with a negative goal difference, which is weirdly impressive in its own way.

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