Chelsea may be chuckling after ruining yet another season for Liverpool and Manchester United raising their glasses to Rio Ferdinand's younger brother for saving their face against Sunderland but this weekend's plaudits must surely go to Portsmouth.
That's right, these guys actually won a game.
With three promotion spots up for grabs every season, the Premier League has had its fair share of no-hopers over the years.
Many were small town outfits like Barnsley and Swindon, clubs that had been small fry for pretty much their entire previous existences. They were just pleased to be there but also utterly out of their depth and were soon sent to the backwaters from whence they had come.
Others, like Derby a couple of seasons ago, were former greats fallen on hard times who suddenly found themselves propelled back into the big time almost in error. They suffered like divers with the bends having come up too far, too soon.
Rarely though has anyone embraced failure the Portsmouth way, with the south coast side transforming itself from FA Cup winners brimming with England internationals to hapless breakers of unwanted records in the space of just a year and a bit.
No side had ever lost all of their first seven Premier League fixtures before. Not even Derby.
But Saturday's 1-0 win at Wolves has changed all that. They may be still the basement dwellers but suddenly the club directly above them, West Ham, are within over-taking distance.
And those three points also mean they are actually doing better than Spurs were last season when they sacked Juande Ramos, and his replacement Harry Redknapp took them to within a whisker of Europa League qualifications.
Suddenly the Fratton Park faithful can smile again, safe in the knowledge that they are no longer football's laughing stock.
Except that they probably still are. Their off-field exploits will see to that for that win in Wolverhampton was merely the most recent episode of a whole week's worth of soap opera dramatics.
The first installment saw the entire playing squad, which is sadly no longer boasting half the England team, peer into their bank accounts and discover their not-insubstantial wages had not been paid.
Then the man who hadn't paid them, but promised he would, had to be taken to hospital for an emergency kidney operation.
While all this was going on the man left running the show back in Portsmouth let it be known the club was two weeks from financial oblivion.
Then a hurricane of rumors suggesting that the manager who led them to FA cup glory in 2008 - that's Redknapp folks - was about to return. These were so strong that bookmakers slashed the odds on him becoming the Premier League's first managerial departure from around 50-1 to evens.
A take-over deal involving a man who thought he was going to buy the club a few weeks ago but was passed over in favor of the man currently in hospital appears to be in progress but with this club that could change at any moment.
No wonder, then, that the sub-editors at London's renowned Times newspaper chose the words "fresh confusion surrounds takeover of Portsmouth" as the headline for their latest attempt to illuminate events of Byzantine complexity.
But at least the players earned their win bonuses, wherever those might actually be.
No club for 110 years has yet managed to start a campaign with seven straight losses and still be whistling happily in May (that club was Liverpool, stats fans).
And it also means that the manager, Paul Hart, can rejoin the human race.
Hart, who was a dogged center back for Leeds and Nottingham Forest in the 1970s and 80s, is but an occasional visitor to the peculiar world of football management and usually inherits jobs as the cheap, in-house option when others are fired, promoted initially on a temporary basis from his more usual role of youth coach, where he excels.
To say Hart hasn't looked particularly happy recently is an understatement and a half. There was little showbiz razzmatazz to his personality anyway but having to explain away defeat after defeat forced this lugubrious character further and further into his shell. A gruff "I don't know" was the usual answer to any question about the club's behind-the-scenes shenanigans, which inevitably included the likelihood of him having to sign on at the local job center some time soon.
Jose Mourinho he sure ain't but the taste of victory was as sweet to his lips as any other's. The man was positively effusive following Hassan Yebda's winner at Molineux, a big grin breaking out under his bald pate.
In fact, I'll bet it's still there now - unless someone has asked him for the latest on the take-over that is.
Jon West is a London-based football journalist and columnist for GlobalSoccerCenter.com.
