Ah, the September international break.

Never does a two-week period feel more interminable than when it pauses the only recently started league campaign.

Yes, it’s technically only one weekend without league football, but these breaks early in the campaign always feel longer. Thankfully Norwich were back in action on Saturday against Stoke, a 1-0 win courtesy of Jack Stacey.

1-0 score lines always make me think of Dean Smith who remarked after victory against Swansea last December that 1-0 is his favourite result. They show, according to our former head coach, the “character of the team and togetherness”. Perhaps more interesting was his claim that “I’d take 5-0, but 1-0 is my favourite.” Does anyone really have a favourite scoreline?

When asked to predict the outcome of a match I typically opt for 3-1 in my team’s favour, so I suppose that’s my favourite. It just seems perfect: the three goals suggest your team has performed well, but conceding one hints at a bit of danger, a moment where the stakes were raised and the tension inside the stadium grew just a little bit. This is obviously dependent on when the one goal is scored, but even an opposition goal scored in the first few minutes before you go on to run riot allows the first goal your team scores to feel that bit sweeter.

I’ll admit to sometimes liking the tension of an opposition goal no matter how many your own team has scored.

Nottingham Forest may have assumed they were safe when Mario Vrančić scored what looked to be a consolation goal in the 77th minute to bring the score to 3-1, and we all know what happened there. That match taught me how very few scorelines are ever truly safe, so I always lean forward and pay that little extra bit of attention when a rival scores, even if the game seems to be out of reach.

Football fans like feeling as if we’re battling against something, which allows the lack of a clean sheet to inject a smidge of doubt that makes the resulting victory even sweeter.

There may be some who regard this as absolute nonsense, and would prefer the kudos that comes with a score line so high that brackets are required. I doubt Manchester United, Leicester, or Liverpool were too upset at not conceding the ‘injection of doubt goal’ which saw them record the joint largest Premier League margins of victory. Still, the Premier League’s highest scoring game is Portsmouth 7-4 Reading.

For the neutral this is probably the more enjoyable result. Reading took the game to 2-2 before their eventual capitulation which allowed Portsmouth to celebrate their victory not only as a total rout, but also as a fightback. Do wins feel better when you feel as if you’ve taken something away from the other team?

There are also those high scoring but painfully close scorelines. Take Norwich 4 Liverpool 5. At one point Liverpool were 3-1 down, scoring their winning goal in the fifth minute of added time. Devastatingly heart-breaking from a Norwich point of view but how much sweeter those three points must have felt having snatched them so late.

Dean Smith may prefer all matches to finish at 1-0, but scorelines are clearly contextual. It’s impossible to have a favourite without knowing the circumstances of a match. A 1-0 win with a 98th minute own goal might feel better in the moment than a relatively straightforward 3-0.

Draws can feel just as satisfying as wins or as bad as a loss. Some of us may prefer the drama of quashing a potential fightback, others might savour the peace of mind that comes with a solid dismantling of a beleaguered looking opposition.

The only thing I’m sure of is that nobody’s favourite is a 0-0. That’s just common sense.