I think Chelsea are just about the most interesting team this season and they have spent a fortune trying to wrestle that top West london club title back from Brentford!

 

They came into 25/26 as Club World Cup champions and with Enzo Maresca (you know my thoughts) as head coach, he was replaced by Liam Rosenior in January, who lasted just 23 games. The Blues ran out of steam as we felt they might, having had a long summer, short off season and first Champions League campaign in three years, playing 66 games if we include the CWC.

 

This season they have no European football for just the third time in 30 years and that, IMO , is a huge plus for a team looking to reestablish themselves in the top 4. They do not have a settled/established head coach, but new appointment Xabi Alonso will have the full respect of the players after a wonderful career and he knows the EPL well. He had great, almost unprecedented success in his first senior head coaching role at Bayer Leverkusen and then moved to former club Real Madrid where he left after seven months by "mutual consent", taking over at Stamford Bridge six months later. I suspect he will have learned more in those seven months in Madrid than during that successful spell in the Bundesliga and he will surely be better prepared to take charge of a big club. He is the same age as Mikel Arteta and incredibly, the two grew up on the same street in San Sebastian and remain friends.

 

Expected numbers give them an additional 7 points and 14 goals scored for last season, the latter would have put them on a par with Arsenal for xGF and that is a solid starting point. 

 

 

The revolving transfer door at Stamford Bridge has been well oiled and used this summer. The Blues sold Marc Cucurella and Andrey Santos for a combined 115m€ and added 11 for about two and a half times that, including new club record signing Morgan Rogers. More will have to leave as they have far too big a squad and one or two might be big names like Cucurella, but these players have not exactly thrived in the EPL for Chelsea and it feels like time for a change in policy and approach and we have certainly seen that and it is a couple of other signings I want to discuss and which highlight that. The West London side have had the youngest team in the EPL in recent years and with a stated policy of really only signing players under 23-24yo at most and eight of the new additions do make that criteria , but three are aged 28+ and two, Danny Welbeck (Brighton) and Jordan Henderson (Brentford) are a respective 35 (36 in November) and 36 yo. Both have looked after themselves, are playing regular EPL football and Henderson went to the World Cup with England. They are also both known to have a very positive outlook and to be good to have on the training pitch and in and around the club and it is for this, almost as much as what they will bring to the pitch (they will feature), that there were signed and with so many youngsters at the club, having two such positive role models can only be a good thing .  The 2025/26 team were underperforming and short of leaders and IMO, the second has been addressed and Rogers is similarly a team player and always quick to praise teammates, unlike some of the senior players at Chelsea last season who refused to take personal responsibility. 

 

Alonso has assembled a very large and talented backroom staff, including Austin MacPhee (see Villa notes above), the usual number who worked with him at Leverkusen and Real, Sebas Parrilla who has been his #2 for 8 years and several who were already at the club, a couple of whom have had a change in area(s) of responsibility.

 

 

Good luck!