It started with a friendly embrace, and then that was that. From that moment on, it was all about the footballfascinating football.At White Hart Lane, where even a missing portion of the stand couldn't dampen the atmosphere,Mauricio Pochettino's Tottenham Hotspur went for Pep Guardiola's Manchester City in a way that made for some spectacle.It was brilliant and it was suffocating, but it wasn't controversial nor overshadowed by a sideshow, and that's the point.Victor Wanyana crunched into tackles, looking part footballer, part Captain America. Kyle Walker and Danny Rose operated up and down the flanks likeScalextric cars controlled by a trigger-happy toddler. Dele Alli andMoussa Sissoko pressed and harried in a way that reminded of Quique Sanchez Flores' assessment last season that Spurs are like "animals." Heung-Min Son, as wonderfully described by Bleacher Report's Alex Dunn, had the energy levels of "a children's TV presenter hooked up to an intravenous drip of pure Skittles."If Tottenham's opening goal was gifted to them by Aleksandar Kolarov, it was also a reflection of how ferocious their pressure was. Their second through Alli confirmed it, turning the ball over and running at City in waves, slicing open a side considered the most sophisticated in the land.The 2-0 scoreline at the final whistle was a fair reflection. And just in the way it had all started, the whole thing ended with a friendly embrace, and that was that. Football had dominated the day, as it had done across the season to that point, and that in itself feels like a triumph.As the 2016-17 Premier League season approached back in the summer, it had the look of a looming DVD box set of planet-sized personalities colliding across 38 episodes. Guardiola and Antoine Conte had arrived and Jose Mourinho was back, joining the heavyweights already here in Pochettino, Jurgen Klopp and Arsene Wenger.It didn't long for the barbs to start. When Manchester United spent enough money on Paul Pogba to create a breakaway economy, Klopp said "the day that this is football, I'm not in a job anymore."Wenger labelled the fee as "completely crazy," prompting Mourinho to shoot backon MUTV (h/t the Press Association's Phil Medlicott, via the Daily Mail) with: "I don't think they ever have this problem because, to have this problem, you need to be at one of the top clubs in the world."The Pogba deal itself seemed to represent a new dimension in football. It was carried out with Adidas as a primary driver, was focused on a global audience and featured hashtags andStormzy that went over this writer's head but apparently nailed it in terms of cultural cool.Right there, it was tempting to think that's what the Premier League was now: Bickering faces, advertising, social media campaigns and stirred-up conflict beamed into living rooms with popcorn at the ready. The football felt like an afterthought. Pleasingly, though, it's been anything but.We might only be seven weeks into the season of the "mega manager," but already the overriding theme of the campaign is not the soap opera but the diversity, innovation, intelligence andmost cruciallya heightened level of the football.On the opening weekend of the season, Guardiola gave us full-backs in central midfield, Kolarov at centre-back and a shape that resembled a 3-2-5. It sent the cynics into a tirade of, well, cynicism and the Pep devotees into a land of diagrammatic bliss. Anyone in the middle was left questioning whether they knew anything about anything, and there was a certain beauty in that. A day later, Liverpool's 20-minute assault on Arsenal was compelling in its style and brutal effectiveness. The hounding of the Gunners' midfield was strikingly similar to that of Spurs against City, with Klopp's in-vogue pressing overwhelming Wenger's technical foundation.Two rounds later we got Tottenham and Liverpool head-butting each other (figuratively, that is) with their similarities. Next up was City showing United that brains are superior to brawn, only for that brawn to make a bit of a comeback. After that we were shown the limitations put on even a brilliant manager when the squad isn't right, as Conte's Chelsea folded to Liverpool.More recently we've had Wenger reacting to tactical shifts, defying perception in the process. Arsenal are now counter-attacking and looking to play in transition far more than previously. Deploying Alexis Sanchez as a centre-forward is like leading your system with an irritable beagle, but it's working.Pochettino then unleashed Son in the same way.The football more than anything has become engrossing, and that was needed. Though last season was historic as Leicester City did their thing, this writer was surely not alone in finding the rest of the league tedious.Waiting for Guardiola to come, City were in limbo land. Chelsea were playing for holidays from December. Arsenal got ever more Arsenal-ly by the week, and we're still trying to claim back those hours stolen from us by Louis van Gaal's United.It's wrong to suggest the Premier League is only about its big clubs, because it's not. But like any league, what England's top division needs is football that grips viewers in a multitude of ways; football that's vibrant and forward-thinking; football that has something in it for every taste, whether it be based ontactical, stylistic or dramatic elements.Last season didn't give us that, and upon reflection, nor did the one before. The Premier League was still itself in the way it was packaged, but it lacked invention and a certain verve in much of its on-field product. Countless games were stale, and even the big clashes like the Manchester derby felt watered down, like tame imitations of themselves.Not now, though. Last month's staging of that very fixture was compelling, and it was so even as Mourinho and Guardiola bucked the narrative of their rivalry and distanced themselves from niggle. And that niggle, that stuff that easily escalates into theMade in Chelsea Manchestervariety, has never taken over.Mourinho has been restrained by his standards and Guardiola has needed a Kanye West soundtrack given how many times he's said "amazing." Elsewhere, Klopp has been a bundle of fun, Wenger's success has made him less tetchy and Conte's only newsworthy words have been about his own club. Pochettino is still the silent assassin among them all.That's not to say the sideshow has been non-existent. "Jose and Wayne" has had a case for becoming its own spin-off series, while Zlatan Ibrahimovic being the star of a video in which he sent boxed training gear to Claudio Bravo had that whiff about it.But the sideshow hasn't become the show. The football hasfascinating football.The Premier League's season of the "mega manager" is doing the unlikely by living up to the hype in the way we wanted it to. Follow @TimDCollins
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