With the grounds of Premier League teams silent this past week for the international break, it is a perfect time to take a breath and reflect on a crazy initial month of the season. These are the top ten stories of the first month:
1. CITY, CITY, CITY!!!
A pair of penalties against San Marino and Switzerland probably wasn’t how Wayne Rooney dreamt of first equaling and then breaking Sir Bobby Charlton’s all-time goalscoring record for England, but the Manchester United captain is unlikely to care now it’s done.
Virgil Gomis is a name that we hadn't heard of before this morning. After having seen this video, though, we will likely not forget it for a while. We will certainly be on the lookout for it in the coming years as we follow the EPL, because, man, how can a person who can do this be stuck on a youth team that doesn't even play in the first division?
He will likely not be mired on Nottingham Forest's U-18 team for much longer, because he scored the goal of his life (which would be the goal of most players lives, really) to win against Ipswich Town's U-18 team, 3-2.
Having suffered a rash of injuries more damaging than Hillary Clinton’s Gmail account, Burnley FC decided to enlist the help of a third-party specialist to solve their medical malais.
If the rest of Didier Drogba's MLS tenure is anything like his first start, the league better hold onto its hat.
Drogba scored three times in his first start for the Montreal Impact (he's made one appearance off the bench), and looked by and large like the prolific scorer he was for Chelsea and the Ivory Coast National Team.
The outburst came against the Chicago Fire, the MLS team that first acquired Drogba's rights before trading him to Montreal. The 37-year-old's hat trick helped the Impact to a 4-3 victory against the Fire.
The arrival of West Ham United’s new Olympic Stadium in the 2016/17 season has Hammer’s fans on the edge of their old Upton Park seats in excitement for the new 80,000 capacity stadium.
Leicester City were supposed to go down last year. For 29 games, they simply weren’t Premier League quality. They only won 20 points from those 29 games, and of the 8 previous teams to do so before them, all 8 finished at the very bottom of the table.
Despite his status as one of the most celebrated young players in the world, Chelsea's Eden Hazard still fights his own mental demons.
In a recent interview with Sport / Foot Magazine, Hazard opened up about what he sees as the difference between him and modern day legends of the game like Messi and Ronaldo:
Wayne Rooney had a bad game against Swansea this weekend, and Manchester United lost 2-1.
Rooney has been much maligned this season, and, aside from a hat-trick against Club Brugge in a Champions League qualifier, hasn't done much of anything on the field.
He has, however, made one of Swansea's mascots' days infinitely better. It's hard to hate on Rooney when he inspires this type of reaction from children.
Face it, you will probably never have this reaction to anything in your life.
While Wayne Rooney was not exactly having the game of his life in Swansea, his family was in Barcelona on holiday. Rooney's son Kai got to take a break from the usual crew at Manchester United and hang out with a different collection of footballers than normal, the likes of Neymar, Messi, Suarez and Gerard Pique.