We began the defence of our title with a 3-0 win over Coventry City at the Emirates, and it was as comfortable as an opening night gets. Three goals, a clean sheet, and a Coventry side who did not manage a single touch in our box across the entire first half. We start this season where we finished the last one, top of the league and in control of the game from the first whistle.

The only real cost of the evening was that it told us little we did not already know. Coventry, newly promoted and set up purely to contain, were never equipped to test us. The questions that will actually define this season, how the new midfield spine settles and whether the forward line has enough depth, were never going to be answered against opposition this passive. What we did get was a clean, professional three points and a first competitive look at Christos Tzolis in the league. That alone was worth watching.

The pattern was set inside a quarter of an hour. Coventry sat deep and invited pressure, and we waited for the mistake. It arrived in the 15th minute when Milan van Ewijk was sloppy in his own half, Riccardo Calafiori pounced on the loose ball, and his pass found Kai Havertz, who steered a first-time finish into the far corner. One touch to set the angle, one to finish.

Eight minutes later the contest was effectively over. Tzolis, making his Premier League debut after his summer move from Club Brugge, drove at the Coventry back line and delivered a cross that Carl Rushworth could only parry, and Bukayo Saka was waiting to roll the rebound into an empty net. Both goals were manufactured down the right, both a product of Coventry's inability to handle runners in behind.

The third, on 49 minutes, was the pick of them for the football rather than the finish. Declan Rice slid a line-breaking pass into Martin Odegaard, who fed Saka, who released the overlapping Ben White, and White's ball back into the box found the captain again. Odegaard's miscued attempt at a finish deceived Rushworth and crept in. Scruffy at the very end, but the sequence before it pulled a compact defence apart exactly as it was meant to.

Tzolis was involved in the build-up to both of the first two goals and looked, on this evidence, like the most interesting thing to come out of the night. Two assists in the Community Shield, then a debut in which he won the ball back for the opener and delivered the cross for the second. It is one game against limited opposition and the caveats apply, but a left-sided forward who presses, wins the ball high, and delivers early is exactly the profile we have wanted on that flank. When we agreed the fee for him in the summer the debate was whether he could handle the step up. Two competitive games in, that debate looks premature.

He is also arriving into a squad that has been rebuilt through the spine, with the club-record move for Bruno Guimaraes the headline addition of the window. The pieces are still bedding in. On this showing, Tzolis is bedding in faster than most.

Not on the night, which is its own mild frustration. The scale of our first-half dominance was captured by a single statistic that will follow Coventry around: they became the first team since Opta began collecting the data in 2007 to record no touches in the opposition box and no tackles in an opening 45 minutes of a Premier League match. Their first tackle did not arrive until the 69th minute, by which point they were three down.

Rushworth kept the score respectable with saves from Rice before half-time, from Tzolis after it, from Myles Lewis-Skelly, and a strong late stop to deny Havertz a second. Had he not been in that form, this is four or five. Coventry offered a Loum Tchaouna overhead kick that looped onto the roof of the net and almost nothing else. Raya was a spectator.

The honest reading is that this is a game to be won and forgotten. We did the first part with room to spare, and we outperformed our 1.8 expected goals doing it. The value was in the margins: Tzolis settling, Havertz opening his account, a new-look side keeping a clean sheet without being asked a serious question. Aston Villa away in ten days, possibly with new signing Ezri Konsa facing his former club, will tell us far more than this did. For now: three points, top of the table, and a new winger who looks the part.