A week on from a victory over Liverpool that was tainted by a calamitous VAR error, Tottenham Hotspur climbed to the top of the Premier League on Saturday.
It was an unexpectedly nervy affair against newly-promoted Luton after Yves Bissouma was sent off on the stroke of half-time, but Micky van de Ven's second-half goal proved enough to secure the three points.
This uncharacteristically gritty victory took Spurs, so often mocked for being brittle, two points above Manchester City ahead of the champion's trip to Arsenal on Sunday. It stayed there, too, after Pep Guardiola's men fell to late defeat, but not by a big enough margin to send Mikel Arteta's side to the top of the tree.
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Spurs have now won six and drawn two of its first eight matches for a total of 20 points from a possible 24. This quite simply wasn't supposed to happen.
In Ange Postecoglou, Spurs had hired a long-term 'project' manager after the 'win now' approach ended in a miserable eighth-place finish, and while many were braced for initial pain amid a glaringly necessary cultural and philosophical reset, those fundamental changes have been implemented with far greater speed and far less difficulty than anticipated.
On top of the change in the dugout, the team had lost Harry Kane, the talismanic superstar around whom it had built for years.
And while Spurs spent just under $265m (£217m/€250m) in the summer transfer window, none of the players who arrived represented a direct replacement for the English striker. Brennan Johnson, Dejan Kulusevski (signed permanently after a loan spell) and Manor Solomon strengthened the attack, but they're all predominantly wide players, and the other senior incomings (James Maddison, Pedro Porro and Micky van de Ven) were aimed at bolstering different areas of the side.
Despite that, Tottenham's attacking numbers at the start of the new campaign have been very strong. At the time of writing, it is averaging more shots per game (19.1) than anybody else in the Premier League, and as many goals per game (two) as Arsenal and Liverpool, the two teams billed as the most likely challengers to City's crown. There hasn't been a problem with finishing either, even after the departure of one of the most clinical forwards in the world — Spurs have exceeded their expected goal tally by one so far.
The big question, then, is how Postecoglou has managed this. Well, first and foremost, the goalscoring burden has largely been picked by Son Heung-min, who's found the net six times in eight matches. With Kane out of the picture, Son is on the end of more opportunities, averaging 3.33 shots and 0.46 expected goals per 90 minutes, compared to 2.52 and 0.31 last term, though this also speaks to Spurs' markedly more attacking style of play.
The South Korean is the only player in the squad who's bagged more than two goals in the league, but crucially, Spurs have had eight different scorers already to spread the load.
![Ange Postecoglou has shown Liverpool the key to life after Mohamed Salah](https://i2-prod.liverpool.com/incoming/article27866873.ece/ALTERNATES/s615b/0_GettyImages-1722443173.jpg)
The main creative spark has been provided by Maddison, who leads the league for assists (five) and chances created (25) and has unquestionably been one of the signings of the summer to date (alongside Dominik Szoboszlai, incidentally). It's also worth mentioning Kulusevski, who's not too far behind with 21 shot assists.
In effect, then Postecoglou, has transferred Kane's responsibility onto another forward who can be devastating in front of goal, and built a well-oiled attacking machine with Maddison at the heart of it.
As a result, Spurs haven't missed Kane up to this point, and while that may change over the course of the season, the exciting thing for the Lilywhites is that they still have to fully integrate their most expensive signing in Johnson, who should return from injury after the international break.
Kane was the definition of a complete forward, mixing elite goalscoring with some of the best incisive passing in the league, but Spurs have followed the 'Moneyball' doctrine by recreating him in the aggregate.
As it confronts the possible departure of its own Harry Kane figure, Mohamed Salah, amid determined interest from Saudi Arabia, Liverpool can learn a couple of lessons.
Fans may instinctively want the club to invest most of the likely nine-figure proceeds into a singular, direct replacement, but that may be a futile effort — is Liverpool really going to find another right winger who can consistently produce 30-goal, 15-assist seasons at this level?
Instead, the best bet may be to copy Spurs' model, using the proceeds to bring in multiple players, one of them a right winger in this case (Liverpool doesn't have another established player who's particularly comfortable playing there) while empowering another attacker, most likely its second-top scorer Darwin Núñez, to be the team's main goal threat.
The plan would be to almost divide the goalscoring and creativity of Salah between a handful of players, rather than trying in vain to find a player of a comparable level.
It's an era-defining conundrum for the Reds, but thanks to Spurs, they're already getting a look at a possible solution. And with Liverpool no stranger to Moneyball, perhaps it's the likeliest approach.