Manchester City enjoyed a good run between the September and October international break and they can look to the same again over the next month.
The staccato rhythm of the early weeks of the Premier League season can be frustrating for fans and can make storylines hard to follow, with a run of games interrupted by an international break in September, October and November.
What the breaks do allow, however, are a chance to analyse (and maybe over analyse) how a team has started and debate what might be going right or wrong.
But conclusions drawn in September can look foolish by October, and for Manchester City, that has certainly been the case this season.
When they lost to Tottenham and Brighton before the first international break of the season, there was concern that this was going to be a lot like last year, and that a title challenge already felt a distant dream.
That two-week pause allowed a chance to reset and when the action resumed, City won the Manchester derby 3-0 to start a run of seven games that produced five wins and two draws. Now, they feel like genuine contenders once again.
You could argue City have been robbed of momentum with this latest stoppage of domestic action, but for a new team still learning the ropes under Pep Guardiola, it might also do them some good.
There is no denying they took some giant strides forward in the last three weeks, bookended by wins against Manchester United and Brentford. After the introspection and worry in September, the picture is a lot more optimistic.
The bite-sized schedule at this stage of the season also allows for easy targets to be set. After wins against United and Napoli and a draw at Arsenal, it became obvious that the Blues' aim was to go unbeaten during this stretch of games.
With seven more fixtures to come before the November internationals, the target should be to repeat that, especially as four of those games are at the Etihad.
Guardiola's side will be strong favourites to beat Everton this weekend. They then have a trio of away games against Villarreal, Aston Villa, and Swansea City. None should hold much fear at the moment.
Then the stretch ends with three successive home games, against Bournemouth, Borussia Dortmund and Liverpool. The contest against Arne Slot's side looks like the biggest fixture of the seven, but Liverpool have had the opposite sequence to City, where optimism has given way to scrutiny from September to October.
If City can head into the November international break having again managed to go seven games unbeaten, and perhaps inflicting a defeat on their title rivals in the process, then the outlook will be very promising indeed.
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