PSG are sixth, Marseille are 17th

Ligue 1 comes back tonight, and before you look at the fixtures it is worth looking at the table. Five matches in, it does not say any of the things it was supposed to say.

Monaco are top. Lyon are second and have not been beaten. Third place belongs to Paris FC.

Not Paris Saint-Germain. Paris FC.

PSG won the Classique and are still sixth

This is the part that takes a second read. PSG went to Marseille and won 1-2. They came through the biggest fixture in the French calendar, and they are sixth.

Two wins, two draws, one defeat. Eight points from fifteen, five behind Monaco. Nothing about that is a crisis — it is October, and PSG have spent plenty of seasons starting slowly and finishing with the trophy anyway. But a club used to being three or four points clear by now is looking up at five teams, one of which shares its city and was not supposed to be there.

They host Le Mans on Saturday evening. On paper that is three points. On the evidence of the last five weeks, "on paper" has not been worth much in France.

Marseille are 17th, and the margin is the strange bit

Marseille have three points. One win, four defeats, no draws at all. Only Le Havre are below them.

Here is the detail that makes it odd rather than simply bad. Their goal difference is minus one.

Minus one. A team that has lost four of five is, across the whole season, a single goal worse off than the teams it has played. They are not being taken apart. They are losing games by the smallest margin available, over and over, and because they have not drawn once, every one of those narrow nights has cost them three points instead of one.

Turn two of those defeats into draws and they are mid-table and nobody writes about them. That is how thin the line is at this stage of a season, and it is why I would not write Marseille off on a table that reads 17th. The scoreline says disaster. The goal difference says something closer to bad luck.

What I cannot tell you is why. I have the table, not the training ground. Whether this is injuries, a system that has not clicked, a goalkeeper having a rough month or simply the coin landing the same way five times, I do not know, and neither does anyone else writing about it from the outside.

Tonight: Lens against Lyon

Lens open the weekend at home and they are 15th on four points. Lyon arrive second, unbeaten, with the best goal difference in the division at plus eight — three wins and two draws from five.

Lens have a goal difference of zero, which, like Marseille's, suggests a side closer to the middle than its position implies. Home games against the better teams are where that either gets proved or stops being an excuse.

Is any of this real yet?

Honestly, no. Five matches is a fifth of a season. Monaco have won four and drawn one, which is an excellent start and not yet a title challenge. Paris FC being third in October and Paris FC being third in May are different sports.

What is real is that the gaps are tiny. Second to fifth is covered by one point. Seventh to fourteenth is covered by two. In a league that has spent most of the last decade being decided by about Christmas, that is worth something on its own.

Ask me again in November, after everyone has played another six or seven. If Monaco are still top and Marseille are still 17th, then it is a story. Right now it is a table that happens to be strange, and strange tables are the best reason to actually watch a weekend of football instead of just checking the scores on Monday.

Tonight's game and the rest of the round are on the Ligue 1 table and fixtures page, which updates by itself while the matches are being played. The weekend across the other leagues is in the news section.