After the Bolton match, New Manchester United finally had a chance to catch their breath.
The English football calendar was notoriously demanding.
Many people thought the most difficult period came in winter, but during those months the biggest problem was often the weather. The cold increased the risk of injuries and made recovery between matches even harder.
In terms of pure fixture congestion, however, the opening months of the season could be just as punishing.
That was especially true for a club like New Manchester United.
They were regularly playing twice a week.
Then September brought international football.
Players from South America and Africa had to make long journeys back to their home countries before returning to England, adding travel fatigue and disrupted recovery to an already demanding schedule.
Fortunately, October offered the club one full week without a match.
The problem was that another international break followed immediately afterwards.
There were two weeks of national-team fixtures between the eighth round of the Premier League on October 4 and the ninth round on October 18.
Before that break, New Manchester United's eighth league match would be against Manchester City.
City had already moved out of Manchester and were temporarily playing their home matches at Gigg Lane in Bury.
The club had leased the stadium while preparing plans for a new ground, but their financial problems remained serious.
There were also rumours that foreign investors were considering buying a Premier League club, and Manchester City were believed to be among the possible targets.
The wider football economy remained weak.
After several Premier League clubs had floated on the stock market, many of their share prices had fallen sharply.
Manchester United and Arsenal remained relatively strong financially, but other clubs were in far more difficult positions.
Some were so heavily indebted that they had effectively mortgaged assets to banks in order to raise cash.
In extreme cases, even player registrations could become tied up in financing arrangements, leaving clubs with far less freedom in the transfer market.
From a purely financial perspective, the timing was ideal for wealthy foreign investors.
A Premier League club that might have been valued at more than £200 million during stronger market conditions could now have a market capitalisation of less than £50 million.
Some heavily indebted clubs were being discussed at figures as low as £20 million.
For someone as wealthy as Abramovich, that kind of purchase price was relatively insignificant.
Of course, buying the club also meant taking responsibility for its debts.
Some Premier League teams owed tens of millions of pounds.
Once those liabilities were included, the real cost of an acquisition could still rise close to the club's underlying value.
Manchester City occupied a particularly strange position in all of this.
There was an old saying that the enemy of your enemy was your friend.
Football rarely worked that simply.
City had watched Manchester United dominate English football for years.
Now another club with roots in Manchester United's support base had emerged and begun succeeding as well.
That hardly made City supporters comfortable.
At present, when people talked about football in Manchester, Manchester United still came first.
New Manchester United were increasingly mentioned second.
Manchester City were beginning to feel like the third club in their own city.
New Manchester United were fifth in the Premier League despite being newly promoted.
Manchester City, by contrast, had slipped into the bottom half and were already looking nervously towards the relegation places.
Their one consolation was that they were also competing in the UEFA Cup.
Unfortunately, that European campaign had created another problem.
For clubs such as Manchester City and Everton, qualification for Europe was not always an advantage.
City had finished ninth the previous season and entered the new campaign with considerable optimism.
Instead, their league form had collapsed.
The main issue was squad depth.
The difference between their strongest eleven and the rest of the squad was too large.
Once City had to compete in two competitions at the same time, the strain became obvious.
New Manchester United had faced similar schedules over the previous two seasons.
At times they had competed on two or even three fronts.
Their performances had occasionally dipped, but the overall impact had been far smaller.
That was because Ethan had always placed enormous importance on squad depth.
He wanted genuine competition between first-choice players and substitutes.
Mourinho shared that philosophy.
Nobody started simply because of reputation.
Form mattered.
Training mattered.
Performance mattered.
That approach kept the entire squad under pressure.
Hleb was a good example.
After his excellent performances the previous season, many supporters assumed Robben and Cristiano Ronaldo would automatically become New Manchester United's first-choice wingers once Hleb left.
Instead, Palacio had been outstanding from preseason onwards.
By the beginning of October, he had firmly established himself on the right.
The same competition existed at centre-forward.
Drogba was usually Mourinho's preferred choice for tactical reasons, but Villa continued to push him hard.
Against Manchester City, Villa got the start.
Robben played on the left.
Palacio started on the right.
Kaká operated behind Villa.
Beckham and Essien formed the central midfield pair.
Across the back were Philipp Lahm, Terry, Curtis, and Kolo Touré.
Čech started in goal.
The match had received relatively little national attention beforehand.
Part of that was because Manchester City were no longer actually playing in Manchester.
Part of it was because their form had been so poor.
They were hovering dangerously close to the relegation zone.
Given City's habit of moving between divisions over the previous few years, another relegation battle did not seem impossible.
New Manchester United's situation was very different.
They were fifth in the league.
Their performances had been excellent.
And at Old Trafford, they had still not lost.
There were also several personal connections between the two teams.
Former New Manchester United defender Sylvain Distin was now playing for City.
He had joined from Newcastle the previous year and had established himself as a regular starter.
Shaun Wright-Phillips, who had also once spent time with New Manchester United, was playing on City's right wing.
At full-back, City had Sun Jihai.
From the first whistle, New Manchester United attacked.
Mourinho had no intention of allowing City to settle.
Keegan had prepared his players carefully.
Before the match, he repeatedly warned them about New Manchester United's attacking movement.
His priority was to keep the defensive shape compact, survive the opening pressure, and then look for counter-attacking opportunities.
Mourinho, however, knew Distin well.
He understood that Manchester City's centre-backs could struggle when forced to turn and defend against quick movement behind them.
That was one of the reasons Villa started.
His mobility and acceleration made him particularly dangerous against that type of defence.
Palacio and Robben were also encouraged to move inside frequently from the wings.
The result was relentless pressure.
New Manchester United's attacking play remained largely based on quick ground passing, but the intensity was extraordinary.
The front four constantly moved around Manchester City's defensive line.
City were barely given time to breathe.
In the 11th minute, New Manchester United won a corner.
Beckham delivered it.
Terry rose highest.
Goal.
1-0.
It was Terry's first goal of the season.
After taking the lead, New Manchester United did not slow down.
If anything, they became more aggressive.
Palacio and Robben continued attacking from both sides.
Villa moved constantly across the front line.
Kaká surged through the centre.
Manchester City's defence was repeatedly pulled out of shape.
On the touchline, Keegan could only watch.
He had no obvious solution.
New Manchester United were superior both individually and tactically.
The final score was 4-0.
Another emphatic victory.
Elsewhere, Manchester United also produced a dominant result.
They beat Birmingham City 5-0 away from home.
Chelsea drew 1-1 at Middlesbrough.
The biggest result of the round, however, came at Anfield.
Liverpool lost 2-1 at home to Arsenal.
Edu and Pires scored as Arsenal came from behind to beat the Reds.
That result allowed New Manchester United to move above Liverpool and into the Premier League's top four.
After eight rounds, Arsenal remained first.
Seven wins.
One draw.
Twenty-two points.
Manchester United were second with six wins and one draw from seven matches, giving them nineteen points.
Chelsea were third.
Six wins.
One draw.
One defeat.
Also nineteen points.
New Manchester United were fourth.
Five wins.
Two draws.
Seventeen points.
Both Manchester United and New Manchester United still had a game in hand because their postponed third-round fixture had yet to be played.
Chelsea's position therefore remained far from secure.
Ranieri had nevertheless done an impressive job.
Chelsea had signed a huge number of players during the summer, yet he had managed to turn them into a functioning team remarkably quickly.
That alone demonstrated his ability as a coach.
In the opening eight rounds, Chelsea had already faced Liverpool and New Manchester United.
They won one.
Lost one.
Rumours, however, suggested Abramovich was not completely satisfied.
He had spent heavily and expected immediate results.
The 3-0 defeat away to New Manchester United had particularly frustrated him.
He reportedly believed that match had exposed some of Ranieri's limitations.
Abramovich's expectations for Chelsea were simple.
He wanted attractive football.
He wanted resilience.
He wanted a team capable of recovering when matches turned against them.
And he wanted consistency.
So far, Ranieri had not fully delivered any of those things.
Consistency in particular remained a problem.
Arsenal were unquestionably the best-performing team in the Premier League at that stage of the season.
They had scored nineteen goals and conceded only five in eight matches.
Their early opponents had included Liverpool and Manchester United.
They had drawn 0-0 with United.
Manchester United themselves had scored eighteen goals and conceded only two in seven league matches.
Van Nistelrooy, Giggs, Solskjær, and Scholes gave Ferguson an attack every bit as dangerous as Arsenal's.
Defensively, United had actually looked even stronger.
Arsenal's back line, by comparison, remained one of the few areas where opponents still believed they could be exposed.
In Ethan's previous life, Kolo Touré would have been playing for Arsenal by now, forming a central defensive partnership with Campbell during this season.
Instead, Kolo was at New Manchester United, where he had settled into the right-back role and was performing consistently.
If Arsenal and Manchester United were meeting expectations, New Manchester United were exceeding them.
They had scored nineteen goals in only seven league matches.
They had conceded just one.
The attacking sharpness and defensive strength that had defined Mourinho's team in the lower divisions had survived the move into the Premier League.
Martin Samuel, one of England's leading football writers, devoted an entire Daily Mail column to New Manchester United's tactics.
He argued that the team's ability to control matches had already reached an exceptionally high level.
Their pressing and immediate counter-pressing occasionally evoked comparisons with Dutch Total Football.
Yet their attacking play was more direct.
More aggressive.
More vertical.
The constant movement of the players created passing angles almost everywhere.
Opposing defenders often struggled simply to keep track of who they were supposed to follow.
Samuel also included a series of statistics.
Because New Manchester United had played only seven league matches, he adjusted the comparison to account for their postponed fixture.
Across those seven rounds, New Manchester United covered more ground than any other Premier League side.
The six players with the highest average running distances in the league were all from Mourinho's squad.
Beckham also had the best pass-completion rate in the Premier League.
He attempted more passes per match than any other player as well.
Interestingly, New Manchester United did not dominate possession.
Their average possession was lower than Manchester United's.
It was far lower than Arsenal's.
Yet they consistently created more dangerous situations.
Even in the 0-0 draw against Portsmouth, they had taken twenty-three shots.
Nine were on target.
Samuel then examined New Manchester United's passing patterns and player movement.
His description was simple.
It looked like a web.
Every player became a connected point.
When defending, those connections tightened.
Passing lanes disappeared.
Space vanished.
Opponents found themselves trapped.
When attacking, the same network expanded.
Players moved into new spaces.
Positions rotated.
Passing angles multiplied.
And with every movement, the defensive structure in front of them was forced to shift again.
The attacks did not arrive as isolated moments.
They came one after another.
A first wave.
Then another.
Then another.
The moment one move broke down, the ball was recovered and the next attack began.
Supporters had already found a name for it.
Wave attack.
In his column, Martin Samuel offered New Manchester United's football the highest possible praise.
(To be continued.)