By Open Chronicle Sports
Three matchweeks are nowhere near enough to define a Premier League season. They are, however, enough to begin asking the right questions.
And after the third round of the 2026/27 campaign, some of those questions have become considerably more interesting.
Manchester City and Arsenal have reached nine points by very different routes. Hull City, newly promoted and still unbeaten, continue to challenge every assumption made about them in August. Chelsea have discovered that an impressive beginning does not yet make them title contenders. Manchester United remain caught somewhere between promise and instability.
Elsewhere, Crystal Palace finally found a way forward, Liverpool collected their first victory under Andoni Iraola, and several clubs already have uncomfortable problems to solve.
Matchweek 3 did not decide anything.
But it may have shown us what kind of Premier League season is beginning to take shape.
Arsenal Win the First Serious Test of the Title Race
Arsenal 2–1 Chelsea
This was the match that gave the weekend its meaning.
Chelsea arrived at the Emirates with six points from six and seven goals already scored. Xabi Alonso’s opening weeks had generated genuine excitement, and there was an increasingly plausible argument that Chelsea might be capable of inserting themselves into the championship conversation.
Arsenal provided the first serious counterargument.
The champions won 2–1 and moved onto nine points from their opening three matches, keeping pace with Manchester City at the top.
The significance extended beyond the points.
Chelsea represented the strongest examination yet of Arsenal’s title defence. Mikel Arteta’s team had opened the campaign with victories over Coventry City and Aston Villa, but neither carried the strategic or psychological importance of facing another potential contender.
Arsenal passed that examination.
There was also adversity. Riccardo Calafiori appeared to have given Arsenal an early lead, only for VAR to determine that Ezri Konsa had been offside during the build-up and recommend that the goal be disallowed.
Arsenal still found a way.
That ability may ultimately matter more than any tactical detail from early September.
Championship teams do not merely dominate opponents. They survive complications, absorb setbacks and continue searching for solutions.
Chelsea, meanwhile, leave north London with their first defeat and a more realistic measurement of where Alonso’s reconstruction currently stands.
They remain dangerous.
But Arsenal reminded them that challenging the champions and replacing them are very different things.
Manchester City Are Already Doing What Manchester City Do
Manchester City 1–0 Coventry City
There was nothing spectacular about City’s scoreline.
There did not need to be.
Erling Haaland’s header was enough to defeat Coventry City and preserve Enzo Maresca’s perfect Premier League start.
Three matches. Three victories.
City are already back in the position from which they have shaped so many recent Premier League seasons: forcing everybody else to keep winning.
Yet this is not simply the continuation of Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City.
Maresca is beginning to construct his own version.
City’s early emphasis on possession has been striking. Before Matchweek 3 they led the Premier League for successful passes, while an overwhelming proportion of their distribution had been short. The arrival of Enzo Fernández gives Maresca another midfielder capable of controlling the rhythm and geography of matches.
Against Coventry, however, there was also vulnerability.
Gianluigi Donnarumma survived an extraordinary early mistake before recovering to make important saves as City protected their narrow advantage.
That detail matters.
The frightening thing about City is not that they have already reached their best level.
It is that they have taken nine points while clearly still evolving.
Hull City Are No Longer Just a Good Early-Season Story
Hull City 0–0 Aston Villa
After three matches, Hull City remain unbeaten.
More remarkably, they remain without conceding a Premier League goal.
Seven points from nine would represent an excellent start for almost anybody. For a promoted club expected to spend much of the season fighting for survival, it demands considerably more attention.
The goalless draw against Aston Villa lacked the drama of some of Hull’s earlier results, but perhaps revealed something even more valuable.
They can manage matches.
Promoted teams often arrive in the Premier League powered by momentum and emotion. The challenge comes when opponents begin understanding their patterns and when games become slower, tighter and more tactical.
Hull have so far demonstrated that their success is not dependent on chaos.
That makes them interesting.
Nobody should start discussing European qualification after three matches. Equally, nobody should continue treating Hull as an automatic relegation candidate simply because they came through the Championship play-offs.
Their next challenge will be particularly revealing.
Chelsea await at Stamford Bridge.
Manchester United Still Cannot Control Their Own Narrative
Everton 2–2 Manchester United
Manchester United’s opening three matches have produced almost every possible emotion.
Defeat at Hull.
Five goals against Ipswich.
Then a 2–2 draw with Everton.
Four points from nine represents neither disaster nor convincing progress.
The greater concern is the absence of stability.
Michael Carrick’s team have already demonstrated that they possess considerable attacking potential. What they have not demonstrated is an ability to impose themselves consistently across 90 minutes.
Everton were always likely to test that weakness.
David Moyes has built a team comfortable attacking space, and their directness made them an awkward opponent for a United side still searching for balance.
The draw leaves Everton unbeaten and reinforces the sense that Moyes has constructed something increasingly competitive.
For United, the timing could hardly be more dramatic.
Next comes Manchester City.
A derby is rarely an ideal environment in which to search for certainty.
Liverpool Finally Have Their First Win
Ipswich Town 0–2 Liverpool
Andoni Iraola can finally breathe a little easier.
After beginning his Liverpool tenure with consecutive draws, the Spaniard collected his first Premier League victory as Liverpool manager at Portman Road.
Alexander Isak scored twice.
That alone will encourage Liverpool supporters.
Isak’s ability to attack space, stretch defensive lines and turn relatively small openings into goals gives Iraola an attacking reference point around which his Liverpool can develop.
The victory does not erase the questions created by the opening two matches.
But there is an important difference between entering Matchweek 4 with three points and entering it with five.
Liverpool now have something to build on.
Crystal Palace Find Their Response
Fulham 2–3 Crystal Palace
Few teams entered the weekend needing a result more urgently than Crystal Palace.
They got one.
A 3–2 victory at Craven Cottage gave Palace their first points of the campaign and prevented an uncomfortable opening from becoming something more serious.
The manner of the victory matters too.
Winning away from home, scoring three times and surviving a match carrying genuine early-season pressure gives Pierre Sage something tangible upon which to build.
Fulham’s situation is considerably more worrying.
Three matches.
Three defeats.
September is far too early for panic, but the Premier League table becomes psychologically more difficult when a club begins chasing the competition almost immediately.
Palace escaped that situation.
Fulham did not.
Newcastle and Bournemouth Show the New Premier League’s Appetite for Transition
Newcastle United 2–2 AFC Bournemouth
This fixture always looked capable of becoming one of the weekend’s most open matches.
It delivered.
Newcastle and Bournemouth represent two versions of a trend that could become increasingly important this season: faster transitions and greater willingness to attack immediately after possession changes.
The Premier League’s own early-season analysis noted an increase in fast breaks compared with last season.
That matters because tactical fashions spread.
For several years, English football increasingly revolved around possession structures, positional rotations and controlled rest defence.
Those concepts remain important.
But the opening weeks of 2026/27 suggest the league may be accelerating again.
Newcastle and Bournemouth offered a glimpse of what that might mean.
The Draws That Matter More Than They Look
Three other Saturday matches finished level.
Brentford 1–1 Sunderland
Brentford remain unbeaten and continue to look more aggressive in attack than in previous seasons. Sunderland, meanwhile, have four points from their first three games, a perfectly respectable beginning.
Brighton 1–1 Leeds United
Brighton’s explosive opening victory over Aston Villa suggested they might become one of the season’s most entertaining sides. Leeds prevented them from turning that promise into another home victory and continued their own solid return to the division.
Nottingham Forest 0–0 Tottenham Hotspur
For Tottenham, the point was important simply because it stopped the defeats.
After losing their opening two league matches, Roberto De Zerbi needed some evidence of stabilisation.
A goalless draw is hardly transformative.
But sometimes stopping the decline comes before beginning the recovery.
The Early Title Picture
Three matches have produced two perfect teams.
Manchester City and Arsenal.
The symmetry is deceptive.
City are beginning a new era under Maresca.
Arsenal are defending a championship and attempting to prove that last season represented the beginning of something rather than the culmination of it.
Behind them sits perhaps the biggest surprise of August and early September.
Hull City.
Seven points, no defeats and no goals conceded.
Chelsea remain close enough to respond immediately, while a cluster containing Brentford, Liverpool, Newcastle, Everton and Leeds demonstrates just how compressed the league remains beneath the early leaders.
No title has ever been won in September.
But points collected now count exactly the same as points collected in April.
City and Arsenal already understand that.
Open Chronicle Sports: What Matchweek 3 Told Us
The most important lesson from Matchweek 3 is not that Manchester City and Arsenal are first and second.
We expected them to be there.
It is how quickly the league beneath them is becoming difficult to predict.
Hull’s emergence has disrupted the expected hierarchy.
Everton look stronger.
Liverpool are rebuilding under a new manager.
Chelsea have enough attacking quality to threaten the established order but have now encountered the champions.
Manchester United remain capable of looking dangerous and vulnerable within the same week.
And at the bottom, pressure is already accumulating around Fulham and Coventry.
That uncertainty is precisely what gives the Premier League its gravitational pull.
The favourites remain powerful.
But almost everywhere else, the hierarchy is moving.
Matchweek 4: The Questions Continue
The international break offers managers a brief opportunity to assess what these opening three rounds have revealed.
Then the Premier League returns.
Chelsea host Hull City in what suddenly looks like one of the most fascinating matches of the weekend.
Arsenal travel to Sunderland attempting to maintain their perfect start.
Liverpool host Fulham.
Tottenham face an improving Everton.
And at Old Trafford, Manchester United meet Manchester City.
Three rounds have given us the first clues.
Matchweek 4 may tell us which of them were real.
Open Chronicle Sports will continue following the 2026/27 Premier League season through match reports, tactical analysis, club coverage and the Matchweek Centre.