Premier League crisis index: Who’s falling into a pit of despair after Week 3?

As we go into the 25th season of the Premier League, it's time to face up to its impact. Not only has it changed football — for good and ill — but it's altered the very language we use. The word "crisis" used to be reserved for extreme circumstances; now, it is a permanent presence in the game.

The CRISIS is its own power. It is always with us. All we have to do is work out where it should be allocated this week …

3. Burnley (or, everybody who isn’t Burnley)

We were going to put Crystal Palace in here, since they've lost three league games in fairly chaotic fashion, but it's probably a little too soon. Frank de Boer is trying to play Ajax football with a Sam Allardyce squad, and he deserves a little grace period before we start pointing and laughing at the inevitable mess. Let's get to it after the international break.

Instead, let's consider Burnley, who are doing very well on the pitch: They've won at Stamford Bridge and now, thanks to Chris Wood, nicked a late draw against Tottenham. But in the process, they are doing great damage to something far more important than points and league positions. They are damaging their brand.

Last season, Burnley's brand was one of the strongest in the league. At Turf Moor, they were a remarkably awkward proposition and ended the season with 33 points, one of the best home records in the league. On the road, they were bobbins: four draws, one win, and seven miserable points. It all added up to a 16th-place finish and a strong, clear identity. You knew where you were with Burnley, as long as you knew where they were.

Three games into this season, they're threatening to ruin everything. At home, they've been beaten by West Bromwich Albion; away, they've beaten Chelsea and taken a point from Spurs. It's possible we're just seeing some early season oddities, and things will soon settle down. But currently, Burnley are dangerously unpredictable, and that can only hurt their image.

Worse, if they start picking up away points and manage to keep up standards at Turf Moor, they'll finish with somewhere between 60 and 70 points. That would put them in the mix for Europe. Maybe a good thing for the club itself — a gargantuan existential CRISIS for all the other teams in the Premier League that know, deep down, that they're bigger than Burnley. Particularly …

2. Arsenal

When it comes to Arsenal doing an Arsenal, we can't be far from reaching some kind of event horizon. There are only so many negative words in all the world's languages, after all, and soon every possible combination will have been deployed to describe Arsenal doing that thing they always do, only more so. What happens then?

Likely there will be a short period when match reports degenerate into experimental nonsense, along the following lines:

Victims! Calamity crispbread Rob Holding senseless, senseless, senseless. Wenger must, must. Players who want to be there don't don't not not — the contracts weep, for they know their time is short. Ohohohohohozil! An Oxlade-Chamberlain for you, and an Oxlade-Chamberlain for you, and an Oxlade-Chamberlain for everybody. Except you. You must have a Bellerin. Does the palm know that the face is screaming? Does it care?

And then, nothing. Nothing left to say, nothing left to write, nothing left to do but watch and wait.

Alexis Sanchez will leave on a free transfer, and Arsene Wenger will sign another contract extension, and the world will respond with the only thing we have left: a stunned and perfect silence.

1. West Ham

Of course, all Arsenal crises are couched in the fact that Arsenal, while hilarious, are also basically secure in the Premier League. The worst that will happen to them is that they might finish seventh. Oh no!

(This is certainly not an attempt to jinx Arsenal into a relegation battle, and we're shocked that you could even suggest such a thing.)

West Ham, on the other hand, are a proper mess. A defence that doesn't function, behind a midfield that barely exists, behind an attack that doesn't see the ball. A manager barely clinging onto his job in a stadium that nobody outside the boardroom has any affection for. A transfer policy that saw, for example, Robert Snodgrass prised away from Hull City at quite some expense in January, now to be made available to anybody who wants him. And now, the ultimate indignity: a right shoeing from a Newcastle side that themselves are a bit rubbish.

It's all starting to look rather ominous. Most imminently for Slaven Bilic, because the manager is always the first casualty of any footballing crisis. And perhaps that will do the job. Perhaps there's an available replacement who can lift spirits and tidy things up. But if not, then things could get really sticky.

Every fairytale has an equal and opposite CRISIS, and for every newly promoted team that has a surprisingly good season, there must be one more established side ready to make fools out of themselves. After the international break, West Ham play Huddersfield, and the Londoners are already seven points behind them. Lose that, and they’re properly in the sticky stuff.