It was Groundhog Day. Same old same old. Same issues, different season. However which way you phrase it, the overwhelming feeling at the end of the game on Saturday was that everything changes but everything stays the same.

Things were even the same off the pitch. As I took my seat, well in time for kick-off, I did a mental check of the regulars that had made it back for another season. Resident pessimist to my right? Check. Resident optimist to my right? Check. The gaggle of nice old dears who sit behind me? (the ones that mutate into screaming banshees at kick-off) Check. Flat cap potty mouth with obligatory copy of the Racing Post? Yup, him too. The two blokes who sneak off for a drink five minutes before the half, and five minutes from the end? Same old same old.

With the final bars of our adopted Elvis ditty still ringing in our ears (the Liverpool PA announcer would never live to see the end of the game if he mangled the end of “You’ll Never Walk Alone” the way the “Wonder of You” was suddenly cut off…) our new season started with a flourish. For the first fifteen minutes, everything seemed right with the world.

Our new boy Samir Nasri scored a lovely team goal on his debut and it seemed he managed more shots on goal in one game than shot-shy Alex Hleb had managed in a whole season. But after the initial burst, when we failed to turn our superiority into more than the solitary goal, the game settled down into an oh-so-familiar pattern.

So much so, that it was almost an anti-climax when West Brom failed to equalise, triggering the usual panic-stricken last twenty minutes with the obligatory injury time winner. Instead, our tendency to pass it around without creating any real openings, plus a lack of cutting edge when we did make chances ensured a nervous second half with everyone expecting the sky to fall in at any minute.

Where Nasri received a hero’s welcome for his man of the match performance, Adebayor confirmed his place is still in the doghouse after spending the whole match doing a passable impersonation of a donkey. The problem with asking for Henry-type wages is that you have to score Henry-type goals to deserve them. It was telling that the loudest chorus of disapproval was reserved for when he opened his body out to try and lift one into the top corner (a goal that our old No.14 has all but trademarked) only to make a rick of the perfectly presentable scoring chance.

The mood amongst the crowds making their way home was sombre. Even though we’d won, you couldn’t really shake the feeling that we’d seen it all before. At the start of the season, as at the end, the result is probably more important than the performance. I suppose time will tell if this match was the warm up act or the main event.