Well calling the 16th August “late August” isn’t rewriting history, it’s rewriting the calendar
@Tom Cato. The Quarter finals were just 5 days earlier with plenty of teams in them.
CL quarter finals were the same week as the EL semis, and I’d say 16 is “plenty” Tom.
Atalanta, PSG, Bayern, City, Leipzig, Lyon, Barca, Atletico, United, Seville, Inter, Shakhtar, Wolves, Basel, Copenhagen, Leverkusen.
How many of those 16 won only 2 of their first 6 league games? Maybe you have a point Tom, educate me cause I don’t follow enough footy outside of United these days.
It's hard to determine because ther are so many other factors involved. Some teams could have had a horrible start regardless, some teams are so much better than the others that they would have done well anyway. Some teams got an extra week (Spanish teams) before the season started - which would have helped. And some leagues play at different pace which may help.
However - if you only look at the results and not consider injuries, opponents etc - there are strong indications that the teams above were strongly affected by the short break.
Several of the teams had poor starts
Copenhagen sacked their coach after the worst start since they had since the merger and became Copenhagen
PSG started the season by losing the first 2 matches
City lost 2-5 to Leicester in their second match
Lyon had 7 points after 6 matches
Barcelona won their first 2 games, and then picked up 2 points from the next 4.
Leverkusen drew their 3 first matches
Basel picked up 1 point from their first 2 matches. Won the third, and did not play again for 3 weeks due to postponed matches
Wolves beat Sheffield United and then got hammered by City and West Ham
Shakhtar drew their first 2 matches
United picked up 3 points from 3 matches
Seville is hard to determine - they won their first 2 - but picked up 1 point from the next 4
A few exceptons that started well
Atletico won the first by 6-1, drew 2 - before going on a serious winning streak. But they also started 1 week later than United.
Leipzig won 4 of their first 5
Bayern won the first game by 8-0, and lost the next to Hoffenheim by 4-1. But then it was business as usual
Atalanta won their first 3 matches - but they also got an extra week compared to United
Inter won their first 2 and only lost to a strong AC MIlan side in round 4
Serie A seems to be least affected by the break - Inter and Atalanta both had strong starts, but they had an extra week, and the tempo is often lower there.
But the only teams out of these 16 who got off to a flying start without any real weaknesses were Leipzig and Atalanta. The majority of the teams had poor or at least not better than average starts.