Wait long enough, and results will come to reflect performances. Manchester City may have won their first seven games of the season, but they always looked vulnerable, and now have lost three in a row. Nottingham Forest may have been second bottom but, other than the twin curses of missing chances and giving away daft goals, they seemed to be playing reasonably well. Put the two together, and the outcome was a dramatic regression to the mean. It turns out the stats were right, after all.


