Ahh, the Prem. Have you missed it? I can sense that you have, especially if the various grumblings on Twitter were any indication. After three months of club soccer starvation, the first meal for many teams has come and gone, voraciously devoured in an instant. And now, the food poisoning is setting in.

Given the massive defeats for Queens Park Rangers, Norwich and Liverpool, the dispiriting impotence of Arsenal and the meek surrender of Tottenham Hotspur -- and this is just in the first five hours of the season alone -- it's a good day to be a reactionary.

Let's review the big lessons already carved in stone.

Bingo Square: Arsenal will to struggle to score goals without Robin van Persie

All it took was one half for this to become evident. At one point in the morning's first live chat of the new season, I believe I wrote "Chance for Arsenal!" so many times that the very words ceased to hold meaning.

To hold over two-thirds of the ball and put 20 of 23 shots off-target is the kind of productivity that sent Kenny Dalglish into another early retirement, but if the panic wasn't evident in the first hour, Olivier Giroud did plenty in a breezy 26-minute debut to further advance the malaise. Wasting Santi Cazorla's trickery time and again was beyond parody; it was borderline offensive. One shot in particular, a 10-yard bend-around-the-post with Simon Mignolet offering half the net to shoot at, brought back memories of Nicklas Bendtner and his pathetic pink boots.

Lukas Podolski spent his EPL debut with back permanently facing goal as if magnetized in place, Theo Walcott became best friends with the side netting and Gervinho's shots were at least more purposeful than his dribbling and ball control.

In short, total and complete chaos. Relegated by Thanksgiving.

Bingo Square: The new Liverpool is the same as the old Liverpool

Losing 3-0 to West Brom, whose new manager Steve Clarke used to co-troll the touchlines at Anfield with King Kenny, is bad. There's no discounting or rationalizing such a whopping defeat, especially to a Baggies side that had mustered just two goals in its six previous season openers.

There was lots of agita to unpack. Some ballsy -- a few might say "AWFUL" -- refereeing by Phil Dowd yielded a red card for Daniel Agger and two penalties for the home side, only one of which was converted. New West Brom loanee Romelu Lukaku tallied. The Shane Long/Peter Odemwingie partnership looked like United's Dwight Yorke/Andy Cole in full pomp. Joe Cole played for barely five minutes before getting injured. Luis Suarez continued his 2011-12 theme of playing well but wasting gilt-edge scoring chances. Zoltan Gera put his name in the hat for goal of the season with a lovely/unbelievable trap-control-volley from long range.

But it's only when we bother to note just how much Liverpool is trying to change this season that the result earns a slightly softer context. The Reds were rampant in the first half under Brendan Rodgers' new 4-3-3/4-2-3-1 hybrid. Suarez was well-supported in the attacking third. Joe Allen carried over his peerless ball control juju (66 of 69 passes completed) from Swansea. The goals whizzed past Pepe Reina at the other end, but red cards on the road frequently turn tight games into blowouts; this was no different. Neither was the Reds' useless wing play despite using two accomplished wing-backs in Glen Johnson and Martin Kelly to work the overlap.

Still, Rodgers out, sell Suarez, force Gerrard into early retirement, imprison John W Henry and turn Anfield into a parking lot. Disband the team, post haste.

Bingo Square: Andre Villas-Boas is bound to fail (again)

There are far easier places to open the season on the road. The Hawthorns, for example, was supposed to be such. Yet with Tottenham road-tripping to Newcastle in Week One, at least AVB can say he has put one of its bigger competitors for a top-four/top-five finish out of the way early despite the 2-1 defeat.

Spurs is trying to evolve like Liverpool albeit with far less to tweak. Losing Luka Modric to Real Madrid (the deal should be concluded any day now) and lacking a totemic striker a la last season loanee Emmanuel Adebayor is clearly going to take time to work through. Despite that, the North Londoners created plenty of chances -- twice as many as the Magpies, to be precise. The retooled, five-man midfield of Sandro, Jake Livermore, Gylfi Sigurdsson, Aaron Lennon and Gareth Bale worked well in support of Jermain Defoe.

Yet the traveling fans will feel aggrieved at equalizing inside the final 15 minutes only to watch, helplessly, as Hatem Ben Arfa squeezed between Rafael van der Vaart and Aaron Lennon on the edge of the box and was tripped on the way through. Why two attacking players were forced to make such plays is unclear -- we'll give them credit for tracking back, I suppose -- but the bad break shouldn't discourage AVB too much in what he's trying to accomplish from the ground up.

Or he should just be canned by Christmas and the proceeds of the Modric sale used to pay his exorbitant severance package.

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