A couple of months ago, The Athletic chatted to an experienced football agent.

The conversation turned to the state of the Premier League and what the agent — who asked to remain anonymous to protect relationships — described as its “17 semi-permanent members”.

The man, with a keen interest in clubs in the English Football League (EFL), was frustrated at what seemed like an ever-widening gulf between the financial juggernaut of England’s top flight and everyone else.

His misgivings seemed perfectly well-founded — until the last few weeks.

In each of the last two Premier League seasons, all three clubs that began as newly promoted sides went straight back down. It seemed to be making the top flight a virtual closed shop: impossible to stay in if you’ve just arrived, and impossible to drop out of if you’re one of the established elite, no matter how poorly you perform.

This season feels rather different. Yes, it is early days, but with just under a quarter of the season gone, Sunderland, Leeds United and Burnley are all above the relegation zone, with the Wearsiders peering down on some illustrious names as they sit in seventh place. And that means some of the Premier League’s more established clubs are starting to sweat.

Lesley Ugochukwu celebrates Burnley’s win over fellow newly promoted Leeds (Molly Darlington/Getty Images)

Brentford and Fulham are glancing over their shoulders; Nottingham Forest were sufficiently concerned at their prospects that they fired Ange Postecoglou after just eight games in charge; while West Ham, who have also gone early in playing their ‘managerial change’ card by replacing Graham Potter with Nuno Espirito Santo, and Wolves, have been ensconced in the bottom two for over a month.

For Wolves, things feel particularly desperate. They are a point better off after eight games of this season under Vitor Pereira than they were a year ago under Gary O’Neil, yet the mood feels worse.

That is partly down to a sense that their squad has been weakened by a poor summer transfer window, but also to a nagging suspicion that this season they cannot rely on three worse teams bailing them out.

A year ago, Wolves were bottom, as they are now, but newly promoted Southampton were ahead of them only on goal difference, Ipswich were just three points ahead, while the other promoted side, Leicester City, had made a better start but still only had nine points to their name.

They had a cumulative 14 points and 23 goals. This season, Sunderland have matched that points tally single-handedly. The combined total for the promoted trio is 29 points and 25 goals.

That points tally is the highest by a set of promoted teams in any of the last 10 Premier League seasons, and comfortably exceeds the promoted sides’ points haul in the previous two seasons combined (23).

The difference in the goals conceded — 34 this season compared to 48 at the same stage a year ago — appears to be the most obvious single difference between last season’s and this season’s newcomers.

After eight games played, this year’s promoted sides are just four wins behind the overall total achieved by last year’s across the entire campaign. It is little surprise that Southampton, Leicester and Ipswich went down at the first time of asking.

Wolves, West Ham and Forest are the most obvious sides to be concerned about the changing pattern, but they are far from alone.

Fulham are in their fourth successive season in the top division, but after a fraught summer in the transfer market and a tough start, they have just eight points. There is little pressure on their manager, Marco Silva, who is widely considered to have done a fine job, but the team could be at risk of their first relegation battle since they last went down in 2021.

Brentford have made a stronger start to the season than many pundits predicted after a tumultuous summer in which they lost head coach Thomas Frank and several key players. They have picked up three wins and collected 10 points so far — one more than Newcastle United, who lie 14th, but who will surely improve as the campaign goes on — and were comfortably better than West Ham in winning 2-0 at London Stadium on Monday.

But there are still questions remaining. How would Keith Andrews, a rookie manager, cope with a poor run of form? Do they have a squad that can sustain a run of injuries? Even allowing for their fine start, many would be surprised if Andrews’ team did not finish in the lower reaches of the table.

This weekend already looks significant when it comes to shaping the bottom of the table. Leeds host West Ham on Friday before Fulham travel to Newcastle on Saturday and Wolves entertain Burnley in a game Wanderers head coach Vitor Pereira has already branded “must win”.

The wisdom of those comments remains to be seen, given they risk making Pereira a hostage to fortune just nine games into the season, but the start made by Burnley, Sunderland and Leeds means his assessment is difficult to disagree with.

One word of caution: in Premier League history, this season’s new boys are still a way short of the best starts by promoted sides. On eight occasions, the three promoted clubs have managed 30 points or more in the opening eight game weeks, with Blackburn topping that table with 43 in 1992-93, the Premier League’s inaugural season.

So the encouraging start made by this season’s improved trio is currently no more than that, and it is entirely possible that all three will still end the campaign battling against relegation. Sunderland, for one, will be mindful that they could lose nine players to the African Cup of Nations in December, while Burnley could see four depart for up to six weeks.

Yet they have already given a clear sign that they are not here to simply earn a one-year payday and disappear back to the Championship. And that alone is enough to have a host of other managers and chairmen shifting anxiously in their chairs.