That said, Liverpool ought to be a class above them. Nasty little away fixtures in crumbling stadiums against upper-mid-table sides are grim, but if you want to win the title then you start by winning them. Manchester Utd made a habit of it for years, their cavalier football drying up into ugly midfield battles when necessary; the sort of game when Roy Keane would force a win through sheer willpower. For the last couple of seasons it's been Chelsea who would go away, play sickeningly badly, ride their luck, nick a goal and shut up shop. It's just something you have to do. Fratton Park, and places like it, are the key to a title challenge. Our season stands and falls here.
Not quite literally, of course. United and Chelsea have both lost surprising games; Arsenal are unbeaten, but their dropping points against Blackburn gives us a little breathing space. But a convincing win - or even a scrappy one - would go a long way towards establishing this as a season where Liverpool are among the front runners.
Not everyone agrees with this point of view. In the days leading up to the Chelsea match a few weeks ago, several newspapers argued that it was the matches between the big four that would decide Liverpool's fate; we gave too much away in the head-to-heads, and we needed to start winning them. I disagree. Obviously, there's a prestige in beating your rivals, and you're taking points from them as well as adding to your own tally; but the devil of the League is in the detail, not the headline matches. United had the third worst head-to-head record of the big four last season, but they also gained 41 points away from home. By contrast, we got 22.
We've improved this season, definitely. Sunderland away had worrying shades of Bramall Lane on the first day of last season, but where we had to rely on a dodgy penalty to scrape a draw then, this time we cantered to an easy 2-0 victory. Villa away was even better, particularly since they equalised so close to time. Back at Anfield, the 6-0 drilling we gave Derby was also very heartening - yes, they were abysmal, but a result like that requires an almost feline cruelty, still playing with the tattered corpse of your opponent long after they stopped twitching. Again, that is a quality I associate much more with the United sides of the late nineties and early noughties; a brutal ruthlessness and hunger to genuinely humiliate lesser opponents. It's nice to see.
These new qualities - ruggedness away and ruthlessness at home - have led us to the top of the table. Portsmouth away is a big test, but if we pass it then I for one will start to believe that we deserve to be where we are. I'm sure people remember what happened last time Liverpool went top of the table - unbeaten in November, we then failed to win for eleven games, and finished fifth. This team is better than that one, definitely, but it still has a lot to prove.
Steve McClaren - an apology
In common with every other commentator, this column may have inadvertently given the impression that it considered Steve McClaren a useless buffoon, a simple-minded clown with the skin of an overripe tangerine and the tactical sense of one too. The glorious results of Our Boys™ against the footballing titans of Israel and Russia have of course made it clear that the England are an unstoppable force in world football, and that Steve McClaren is a miracle-worker and genius who in the space of a few short months managed to mould from Sven's tawdry leavings a team of breathtaking invention and guile; at least until England are feebly put out on penalties at the quarter-finals by Sweden, whereupon it will once again be obvious that he is a useless buffoon, a simple-minded clown etc and so on. We apologise for any confusion this may have caused.