For a football club that sports a cockerel on its crest, Tottenham Hotspur don't do much crowing. It is only when writing "Tottenham host a top-of-the-table clash with Manchester City on Sunday" does it dawn that Spurs are second. It's probably worth reiterating, slowly. Perhaps in a loud clear voice so everyone can hear at the back.
Tottenham Hotspur are second in the Premier League table. This is their best start to a season in over half a century, on the back of a highest-ever Premier League finish of third. A side that last season conceded the joint-fewest goals with Manchester United, and were outscored only by Manchester City, have hit the ground running in difficult circumstances.
For context, this is a Spurs side unbeaten domestically having conceded just three goals all season, despite having been deprived of key men Mousa Dembele, Hugo Lloris, Harry Kane, Eric Dier, Moussa Sissoko and Danny Rose at various points already.
Many predicted a thin squad would buckle when injuries and suspension bit—not so far. Still the cockerel does not crow.
In comparison champions Leicester City have lost as many league games this season as they did in the entirety of last term. Maybe it's not just Jamie Vardy who has taken to drinking port the night before matches.
Given they were so in vogue last season it was rumoured Anna Wintour might replace Mauricio Pochettino at the helm, why is no one talking about Spurs this time around?
Wins against Crystal Palace, Stoke City, Sunderland and Middlesbrough, along with draws against Everton and Liverpool, do not a season make. But it's a start that deserves more than the sound of no hands clapping.
Indeed, if teams were awarded points per column inch written about them, Tottenham would be little higher than mid-table.
Pep Guardiola's immaculate start to life as a Premier League manager has had so many pages dedicated to it that every tree in Manchester lives in fear it will be turned to pulp, while Jose Mourinho has been hailed both a god and godawful in the space of six matches. Columnists have not been short of subject matter.
How to compete with Manchester's monopoly of the back pages? You don't, even if Jurgen Klopp is giving it a good go down the M62 at Liverpool.
Last season the German was largely more exciting to listen to than his team was to watch. They are on at least a par with each other this time around. September has seen Liverpool secure three league victories, score 11 goals and concede just three. It's time for a sobering vat of coffee when James Milner cuts quite the dash, from left-back.
Even Everton under Ronald Koeman are attracting more interest than Spurs. The awakening of a sleeping giant by a ruddy-faced Dutchman is quite the story it seems.
Antonio Conte's touchline antics guarantee good copy even in a dull game involving Chelsea, while a reported remit from Roman Abramovich to overhaul his squad, per The Independent, is unlikely to dissipate interest in what's going on a Stamford Bridge. Transfers trump talent everything.
Arsenal supporters may feel like they have spent the last decade trapped in a Truman Show-like existence of Arsene Wenger's design, but with six victories from their last seven games a potential shifting narrative at the Emirates Stadium will continue to fascinate. Even if it involves a club that has endured more false dawns than a Vicar of Dibley lookalike competition.
Likewise, how Leicester follow up a sporting miracle is worth at least a season of anyone's time. As a neutral you don't back an underdog for nine months, and then take it back to the pound the first time it has an accident (or three in Leicester's case) on the carpet.
An obsession with newness permeates football just as it does all aspects of life. Perhaps the only thing to match manager turnovers in terms of frequency is divorce rates.
By their own admission Manchester City, Manchester United and Chelsea are in periods of transition. Klopp is overseeing his first full campaign at Liverpool despite it seeming like he's been here forever, while Claudio Ranieri is in only his second season at Leicester.
In contrast, now in his third season, Pochettino has had five transfer windows to shape his squad, and three summers to drill into his players exactly what he wants from them. We know what to expect from Spurs, and more often than not they deliver it. Maybe that's not enough to sate the interests of the neutral, or the media, even if the club's supporters (and manager) are happy to fly under the radar.
That a player like Heung-Min Son can seamlessly slot into the way Spurs play when given the opportunity—to the tune of five goals in as many matches—despite spending last season on the periphery to the extent that it looked as though he would leave, demonstrates just what a finely tuned machine Pochettino has created.
When one cog breaks, the Argentinian simply replaces it with another. The man in the dugout would be an engineer were he not a manager.
Perhaps the cult of personality has never been more prevalent. In the season of the galactico manager, Pochettino is respected without question, but perhaps not revered in the manner of some of his contemporaries. He should be, as should his team, and not just by those who have a secret hard drive on their laptops for hot-pressing compilations.
There is no doubt the Premier League is a strange beast, capable of making you secretly hungry for more while asking for less. Hyped out of all proportion, it has become larger than life to the extent it is little more than a caricature, but no less entertaining for it.
It has long since been the most raucous party in town, with Tottenham the guy who spends the night making small talk in the kitchen. Listen carefully above all the noise, though, and it is often the case those who say the least have the most interesting things to say.
Pochettino says little more than he has to, but he is doing fascinating things in north London. His dealings with the press are courteous without being overly personable, and he somehow manages to give straightforward answers on contentious issues without veering into choppy waters. It's quite the gift, though one suspects he would be happier if the only people in his life he had to answer to were his wife and chairman.
Tottenham's model is at odds with the majority of their Premier League peers in that they place more emphasis on re-signing the players they already have, as opposed to bringing in new additions by the truckload each summer.
Of course, this is only feasible if the players already at a club are better than the alternatives available elsewhere. Spurs are one of just a few clubs who adopt a better-the-devil-you-know approach, which is a surprise given football is inundated with them.
In the past few weeks, seven first-team players have committed their long-term futures to the club by signing contract extensions. Kyle Walker, Christian Eriksen, Harry Winks, Tom Carroll, Rose, Alli and Dier have all had the obligatory picture taken with Pochettino's suited arm draped around them (see glorious tweet below). No one will be surprised should Kane, Erik Lamela and Jan Vertonghen do likewise before the turn of the year.
Maybe this is part of the reason they are seen more as top-four candidates than title contenders.
Evolution is a dirty word in an industry where every single match is capable of eliciting revolutionary impulses in supporters and pundits alike. Pochettino's penchant for signing players to complement his squad, not necessarily transcend it, could be interpreted as doing no more than jogging on the spot.
The additions of Vincent Janssen, Georges-Kevin Nkoudou, Victor Wanyama and Sissoko may not set the heart aflutter, but neither will they upset the equilibrium in a young dressing room driven by a desire to prove itself.
As for recouping the best part of £35 million for Ryan Mason, Nacer Chadli and Alex Pritchard—let's just say there is no better selling club in the country than Tottenham.
No sport talks in long-term platitudes while embracing short-termism at the first sign of trouble like football. Tottenham appear to be bucking the trend.
Pochettino is contracted until 2021, with the core of his side now committed to a similar period. You don't need a degree in economics to understand securing assets in any business is critical to long-term stability.
Chairman Daniel Levy and his board are doing just that. It may seem economically prudent, given transfer fees are only going in one direction, but it's a model not without risks of its own.
Levy is placing his unequivocal trust and money in the hands of Pochettino, backing his coach to not just see out his own contract, but ensure those players he has asked be rewarded with new deals retain their value at the very least.
Knowing Levy, he'll expect Pochettino to have doubled the worth of his squad the next time a stock check is carried out.
Placing a higher value in what you have as opposed to what you might acquire may be fiscally sound, but it's not very sexy. Just ask Arsenal supporters, though maybe not this week when they're winning.
Still if Pochettino's first 10 years come even close to matching Wenger's at Arsenal, there will be few complaints.
They might even get the odd back page.
Tottenham Hotspur vs. Manchester City, Sunday at 2:15 p.m. BST
As I type, Brendan Rodgers is likely holding a masterclass on how to use an "educated press" to outtactic Pep Guardiola, per the Guardian. On Wednesday Celtic became the first side this season to take the lead against Manchester City—not once but thrice.
A 3-3 draw at Celtic Park curtailed City's bid to match Tottenham's record 11-match winning start to a season, set in their title-winning campaign of 1960/61. It also had the Premier League's official engraver wondering if he'd been a little hasty in making a start on this season's trophy.
Pochettino was always likely to meet Guardiola's high press with one of his own on Sunday. The two managers are already well acquainted, with Pochettino having engineered Espanyol's first win over their local rivals for 27 years when beating Guardiola's Barcelona in February 2009.
Barcelona went into that game six months unbeaten and on course to win the treble. They hadn't banked on lowly Espanyol breaking La Liga protocol at the time. Instead of waiting on the edge of their own box for Lionel Messi, with an autograph book in one hand and pen in the other, they pressed as high up the pitch as possible and got at Barcelona from the first minute.
"Espanyol showed the world how to beat Barca," read the match report in El Periodico (via the Daily Mail). Pochettino will hope to write similar, if slightly tweaked, headlines at the weekend.
The sight of Celtic repeatedly unsettling their visitors by harassing City's back four will only fortify his conviction that Spurs must not stand on ceremony against the league leaders.
Even the usually metronomic anchorman Fernandinho missed his beat on more than one occasion, when Celtic's forwards made a nuisance of themselves around the Brazilian's feet.
Claudio Bravo's pass-completion rate dropped from 84.21 per cent in City's last game against Swansea City to 72.73 per cent in midweek. Given the significance Guardiola places on the work his goalkeepers do with their feet, to force Bravo to go long by pressing high undermines City's game plan at the source.
The temptation is to sit deep and challenge City to break down banks of bodies across midfield and the back. Against most teams, it can be quietly effective; against the best, it tends to be the equivalent of jutting your chin out to Muhammad Ali in his pomp, closing your eyes, and hoping for the best.
That's not to say Guardiola's team won't rip apart plenty of sides that attempt to fight fire with fire. More often than not, they will. However in Janssen, Spurs have a workhorse physical enough to pose questions of City's centre-halves. Likewise, Alli, Son and Eriksen are at least as industrious as their counterparts in terms of hounding possession in the final third.
It's a tactic that worked perfectly for Pochettino last season, with Spurs claiming a league double over Manuel Pellegrini's admittedly considerably more lackadaisical City side.
For two historically evenly matched sides, it's quite the quirk that the last draw between them came some 25 meetings ago, back in 2010/11 when they played out a 0-0 draw. With the fixture having produced 22 goals in the last five Premier League meetings between these teams at White Hart Lane, a repeat seems unlikely.
The presence of Sergio Aguero alone makes the suggestion of City being involved in a goalless game seem fairly preposterous. Despite missing three games through suspension he has scored 11 goals already, in the process setting a new best goals-per-minute ratio in Premier League history (over 10 goals) at 106.
If Aguero can stay fit, Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo may finally have a serious fight on their hands for the Ballon d'Or.
Hugely impressive as City have been this season—and it's hard not to get carried away with some of the football they have played—it's worth illuminating the standard of the opposition they have faced thus far. Taking Manchester United out of the equation, City's five other victories have come against teams placed 15th, 17th, 18th, 19th and 20th in the Premier League.
October is unlikely to be as accommodating. In the space of 30 days, City face Tottenham away, Everton at home, Barcelona away, Southampton at home, Manchester United (in the EFL Cup) away, West Bromwich Albion away, and finally Barcelona at home.
For now Guardiola will be focusing all his attention on Tottenham. He once said of Pochettino's Espanyol, per the Guardian: "There are teams that wait for you and teams that look for you: Espanyol look for you."
Be in no doubt, Tottenham will come looking for Manchester City on Sunday.
All stats provided by WhoScored.com unless otherwise stated