The first international window of the Premier League season has arrived with Manchester City alone on a perfect record. Five matches, five wins, and a three-point cushion over Arsenal at the top of the table — the best possible on-pitch beginning to life after Pep Guardiola. Off the pitch, the club’s position is less settled, with any punishment for breaking the Premier League’s financial fair play rules not yet known. With that matter unresolved, the more immediate question is what a five-win start has historically been worth.
City are the 15th different team to win their opening five games of a Premier League season, and it is the fourth time they have done it themselves. Their own record is a warning as much as a boast: on the three previous occasions they won their first five, they went on to take the title only once, in 2023-24, having failed to build on those early wins in 2015-16 and 2016-17.
The wider pattern across the league points the same way. Only four of the 14 teams to have won their first five matches have gone on to be champions, a conversion rate of 29%: City in 2023-24, Liverpool in 2019-20, and Chelsea in 2009-10 and 2005-06.
What separates those four from the rest is that none of them stopped at five. Chelsea in 2009-10 and City in 2023-24 both stretched the run to six wins, Liverpool made it eight in 2019-20, and Chelsea’s nine victories in 2005-06 remain the longest winning start to a Premier League season. Go back further and Tottenham’s 11 straight wins at the beginning of 1960-61 stand as the record for a top-flight campaign — and they won the title too.
A fast start, though, guarantees nothing. Manchester United won their first 10 games in 1985-86 under Ron Atkinson and were unbeaten in their first 15, yet collapsed to a fourth-place finish.
Fixture difficulty is part of the picture. According to the Opta Power Rankings, City have had the second-easiest start in the division, with their opponents carrying an average rating of 91.2; only Liverpool, at 91.1, were handed a kinder opening by the fixture computer. There is also a more specific omen: none of the previous seven clubs to start a Premier League season with exactly five wins have gone on to win the title that same campaign. The most recent example was Liverpool last season, who beat Bournemouth, Newcastle, Arsenal, Burnley and Everton before losing four in a row. Four of those five victories featured goals scored after the 83rd minute, a run that proved unsustainable.
Question marks about City’s defensive qualities this season raise the possibility that their current streak may prove similarly fragile. The test comes immediately after the international break, when they visit Anfield to face a Liverpool side still unbeaten under new manager Andoni Iraola.
For everyone else, the historical floor is more encouraging than it looks. The lowest a team has finished after winning its first five games is sixth — Newcastle United in 1994-95, although that came in a 42-game campaign. City’s current run is the 40th occasion in English top-flight history of a side winning its first five, with 14 of the previous 39 going on to take the league title, or 36%.
Across the previous 34 Premier League campaigns, champions have averaged 11.3 points from their first five games. Arsenal collected 10 last season, dropping points in a defeat at Liverpool and a home draw with City. Mikel Arteta’s side have started better this time around, with 12 points from a possible 15 and only a shock 3-0 loss at Brighton blotting their record.
The lowest first-five tally by an eventual champion came in the inaugural 1992-93 season, when Manchester United took seven points from two wins, one draw and two defeats and still finished 10 points clear of Aston Villa in a 42-game season. No team has won a Premier League title in a 38-game season after managing fewer than eight points from their opening five matches; United have won the league four times after exactly eight points, in 1998-99, 2002-03, 2007-08 and 2008-09, and City matched that in 2020-21. The most astonishing recovery of all remains Sunderland’s in 1912-13, when they drew two and lost five of their first seven games before going on to win the First Division — a comeback made easier by the fact that only two points were awarded for a win in that era.