First Impressions Count. Especially on TV. 📺

Thanks for joining me for our second edition of The Correspondent. If you’re new here, you’re very welcome. I hope you like it. And if you’ve come back for a second time, welcome back. As it happens, I wanted to write about first impressions this week. I hope that means I made a good one first time around. 

Despite being an actual adult, there is a childish thrill about the first weekend of the season. It is some combination of the new kits and the new teams and, maybe above all, the new signings that combine to make it feel like a fresh start. Deep down, we all know nothing ever changes in football. The storylines this year will carry more than an echo of last. But that freshness, that feeling of renewal, somehow makes you wonder. 

I’ve thought for a long time, though, that not all new beginnings are the same. The ones that are broadcast around Britain, in particular, often carry more weight. And Tijjani Reijnders, a player I loved watching in Serie A, may be about to offer a perfect case study in why. I’ll do my best to explain.

One of the unfortunate drawbacks of football’s unrelenting embrace of data is the creeping tendency to judge players solely by their output. Just as there are, famously, no points for artistic impression, it is impossible to deliver a conclusive victory in a social media argument by citing the thrill of wonder that some players inspire, or to quantify for a video game the feeling of boundless possibility innate to others.

It is far easier to cite what is, in effect, a gauge of their productivity: presenting their G+A – the goals they have scored and the goals they have created – has the air of being scientific, inarguable, a solid island of cold, hard fact in a teeming sea of opinion and guesswork and uninformed impression. Players are reduced to what they have done.

There was absolutely nothing wrong with Tijjani Reijnders’ G+A from his Premier League debut. He got one of each as part of Manchester City’s warning-shot rout of Wolves on Saturday: a smartly taken goal, speared expertly across José Sa with his left foot in the first half; an artful assist, teeing up Erling Haaland with a disguised cutback in the second. One goal, one assist. Not a bad start at all.

Neither was the highlight of Reijnders’ performance. The Dutchman was the central figure in City’s opener: a wonderful, electric shift of his feet to escape two Wolves players, a shimmy through a chicane, followed by an improvised, scooped pass to free Rico Lewis. Haaland scored the goal. Lewis got the assist. But it was Reijnders who had created both the moment and the memory.

It was that instant, more than anything else, that set the tone. Reijnders was not, in truth, the most eye-catching signing of the summer. At 27, he is a touch older than most of the new recruits elite clubs target. He is, by modern standards, kind of a late bloomer. He spent the first half of his 20s at AZ Alkmaar; by the time he left the Netherlands, it might have been assumed that he had missed his chance. His undoubted excellence at AC Milan was undercut, just a little, by Serie A’s diminishing sheen.

He was, in other words, precisely the sort of player who needed a good start: if not for his own confidence, or even the faith of his teammates and his manager, Pep Guardiola, then certainly in the eyes of the fans. A quiet performance – not even a disastrous one – might have, however infinitesimally, placed just a little pressure on his shoulders, a sense that he had not yet proved himself, that perhaps his signing carried with it just a touch of risk.

More than that, he needed a good start that everyone could see. The importance of a strong debut goes without saying, of course, but not all debuts are created equal. Just as we sometimes forget that there is more to a player than that which can be easily and precisely measured, we too often ignore the role of television – or at least broadcasting, over whatever medium – in shaping impressions. 

In Britain, it remains the case that not every Premier League game is televised, the enduring absurdity of which has been noted by the Australian comedian Jimmy Rees. Around the world, some games attract larger audiences than others; games which have their own time slot, for example, are likely to capture the attention of more fans than those which do not.

Those games, then, carry an outsize influence on how we collectively think of players. An impressive performance in a game broadcast live around the globe will go further than an equally impactful display in a game which only those present at the stadium can see. 

For a long time, this had a material impact on a player’s career: a good showing at a World Cup, for example, might have been enough to win a transfer until relatively recently. (As late as 2014, that’s exactly what happened with James Rodríguez.) Most clubs, if not all, are sufficiently alert to the dangers of availability bias that those cases are much more rarer.

But that does not mean the phenomenon no longer exists. There are countless examples of players who have oddly unflattering reputations in England – Zlatan Ibrahimovic, previously, and now Lautaro Martínez – because they are judged exclusively on those occasions when the English public sees them, in the Champions League, against some of the best teams in the world. 

And there are others who have benefited from performing well on the most visible stages. England finally awoke to the wonder of Khvicha Kvaratskhelia after he cut three Premier League teams apart in the Champions League knockout rounds last year. The stock of several Crystal Palace players, not least Adam Wharton and Jean-Philippe Mateta, was already high before their FA Cup run last spring; it was higher still afterwards. 

That is, in part, because those displays offered proof that those players can thrive when the pressure is greatest. But it can also be traced back to the exposure those games, the ones that everyone is watching, can offer. For much the same reason, Hugo Ekitike no longer seems like a gamble at Liverpool, following two goals in two televised games, and Matheus Cunha has been anointed as a savior of Manchester United. 

None of that means that any of those players will prove to be long-term successes, of course, but that is not to say it is entirely meaningless. Public perception might be fleeting and ephemeral, noise rather than signal, but the tone it creates can have an influence: it changes the questions managers and players are asked, it alters the way that opposition teams defend and attack. In some small way, it sets the mood. 

Reijnders does not have to worry about that now, of course. The Premier League is a place where first impressions last, and the Dutchman, live on television, had everyone at hello.

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My season started last Friday at Anfield, a wild, raucous, shameful and intensely emotional debut for the new Premier League season. For fans, as well as journalists, most games tend to be quite fleeting: even those that feel important in the moment are quickly lost in the thundering torrent of goals and controversies and stories that the Premier League generates.

Even at the time, though, it felt apparent that the game’s defining moment – Mohamed Salah standing on the field, alone, wiping tears from his eyes as he listened to the crowd sing in honor of Diogo Jota – will prove to be a lasting one. Perhaps it is recency bias, or the enduring sorrow of Jota’s death, but it does not feel an exaggeration to suggest that it may well prove to be the most powerful images of the season.

That moment, to my mind, did two things. Firstly, it showcased how raw and how deep the pain of Liverpool’s players and staff runs. That is something that has been easy to say in the abstract. Salah made it plain.

And secondly, even more importantly, it effectively gave the players – and the fans, to some extent, too – permission to display their grief publicly. More than moving, it was genuinely brave of Salah to demonstrate his vulnerability in front of the eyes of the world. 

He doubtless felt tempted to keep his sadness private, to allow his devastation to wash over him in the safety of the changing room. That he didn’t, that he let it play out on the field, makes it that little bit easier for everyone else to acknowledge what they are going through: not just in relation to Jota, but in their own lives, too. 

Rog and Rory break down all the action from Week 1 of the 2025-26 Premier League season! They recap Liverpool's emotional win against Bournemouth at Anfield and an intense matchup at Old Trafford between two teams already in must-win mode with Arsenal vs. Manchester United. Plus, all the overreactions and notable moments from the first week of the season. Watch on YouTube or listen here.

Thanks so much to all of you who took the time not only to sign up but to write in over the last few days. Modesty means I can’t publish the ones that say nice things about me – this is my culture and I refuse to contradict it – but all your comments were much appreciated, I can assure you.

There were loads of great questions and ideas, too; I’ve had to pick just a handful to write about, but I’ll try my best to come back to the others at a later date. (I have to condense some of the emails for brevity, but this does not mean I haven’t read them in full.) And if you have something to get off your chest, feel free to join in by replying to this newsletter or emailing me here.

Let’s start with Mike Simmons, who is impressed by Liverpool’s summer spending. “I’ve been a Wirtz fan for years, and if they really do bring in Marc Guéhi and Alexander Isak, it will be an off-season for the ages,” he wrote. “Everything I hear is it’s too much churn, but it’s hard not to feel inspired. This is definitely not my recent memory of how Liverpool does recruitment.” 

Nor mine, Mike, and I’ll admit that leaves me feeling a little uneasy. This summer has taught me that I like it when Liverpool are signing players who feel smart, maybe a touch edgy, who seem like just a little bit of a gamble. I’m excited to see what this new version of the team looks like, of course, but there’s something especially thrilling about thinking your club is smarter than everyone else, too.

Chris Roselle, meanwhile, had a question about Tottenham. “How should I realistically look upon this ownership, led by Mr. Levy?” he asked. “Up until last season, we’d always challenged for top four, a few times for the league, made a Champions League final, got to watch players like Kane and Son in their prime. It really hasn’t been a bad run since I’ve been a fan.” 

You have, sadly, hit upon a longstanding theory of mine, Chris, which is that soccer is not good – certainly not as good as American sports – at assessing relative success. This is one of the best periods of Spurs’ history. Maybe not the best, an honor that still goes to the early 1960s, but it is the strongest Spurs have consistently been in my lifetime. It is, perhaps, a bit too easy to lose sight of that.

And finally, Dan Everett had a great idea. “Could you identify the Grealish-type personalities to watch on each team this season? As you said, there aren’t many players like Jack Grealish, but who are the distinctive characters – both the positive and challenging ones – that we should keep an eye on?” This will, I think, require a degree of research, and also might be best deployed once the transfer window is closed and the squads are settled (until January). Let’s aim to come up with a comprehensive list for the first international window. Leave it with me.

Before that, of course, I’ll be back next week. If you have a question to ask or an idea to share, a reminder that the email address is [email protected]. All of your emails are enormously welcome. And if you’re enjoying this newsletter, please do tell your friends, family, colleagues and enemies about it: our abiding attitude is the more the merrier.

See you next week,
Rory