THE NFL’s social media team hit the nail on the head after the opening round of American football fixtures at the weekend.

“Reminder: every 1-0 team is going to the Super Bowl.”

The light-hearted message about not getting carried away after winning in week one could refer to any sport.

Certainly, few at Valley Parade should be paying too much consideration to a League Two table which shows City in fifth place a month in and two points behind very early leaders Doncaster.

Still, the 10-point haul from the opening five games equals their best start to the season since 2016 when Stuart McCall would eventually lead to the club to an unsuccessful promotion tilt at Wembley.

That team began with three wins and two draws – and would not taste defeat until mid-October against Oxford.

Since then, the highest tally from the first five fixtures was 10 points – achieved the following season and then during the Derek Adams honeymoon in 2021.

His side won three on the bounce after an opening-day draw at Exeter to send spirits soaring at Valley Parade.

But a miserable loss at Leyton Orient in their fifth game kicked off a slide that would see them pick up only two points from the next 15. The season would continue to drift and the Scot was gone in February.

Both subsequent City campaigns began in identical fashion under Mark Hughes with two wins, two defeats and seven points. One would end in the play-offs; the other in his exit a month later.

Glance back 12 months and, of the four teams that would go on to get promoted, only Mansfield were in a top-half position at this stage.

City's Premier League-bound team lost three of the first five games in 1998City's Premier League-bound team lost three of the first five games in 1998 (Image: PA)

The Stags were seventh on nine points, play-off winners Crawley were in 13th, Wrexham down in 16th and Stockport 19th.

The two sides that would finish first and second had managed just two wins between them from 10 attempts.

Gillingham began with a bang winning four of their first five. They would end up mid-table and six points adrift of the play-offs.

And Graham Alexander won’t need reminding what happened with August pace-setters MK Dons.

Their 12-point start earned him the League Two manager of the month accolade – but he was out the door by mid-October and being unveiled by the Bantams three weeks after that.

How quickly football fortunes can change. It’s a long old season.

“It will be a considerable time before the league starts to smooth out into what it could potentially look like," said Alexander.

“There are always changes with mad runs of form in both ways, up and down.

“I don’t really know what the table looks. I know we’re fifth but don’t know exactly which four teams are above us.

“It’s irrelevant to me. People think I’m lying but I don’t look at it, I look at the next game.

“Positions in the league are irrelevant now. It’s the points total that we need to keep adding to one game at a time.

“Can we get three points? If not, can we get one? Those are the two questions we should be asking ourselves, not where we are in the league.

“But we are reasonably happy that we’ve started in the way we have.”

Nobody is denying it’s been a solid start from City but it’s nothing more than that. The job has only just begun.