Absence of the injured Eden Hazard was apparent as a substantially weakened team from Stamford Bridge again came up short in a Wembley showpieceIt was only a friendly. That’s a fact that means Pedro will be available for Saturday’s league game against Burnley despite his red card – and it’s also a useful excuse for a largely indifferent display from the Premier League champions. Arsenal may have needed a penalty shootout to win the Community Shield but Chelsea never seemed quite in the game. Quite how troubling that should be depends largely on what stage they are supposed to be at in their preparations, but there are definite causes for concern.Chelsea’s strength last season was the 3‑4‑2‑1 formation that provided...
United and City expect far better for Manchester than last season while Premier League champions Chelsea hoped Morata’s goals could retain their crownAfter Antonio Conte led Chelsea to their fifth Premier League crown in his first campaign, Pep Guardiola and José Mourinho embark on a defining 2017-18 season. Defining because the pair were granted a free pass last term. However, Conte’s feat casts a harsh light on how poorly Guardiola and Mourinho performed. Guardiola guided City to an unconvincing third and Mourinho took United to a lowly sixth. As the positions suggest, neither manager was able to mount a serious tilt at the title and thus their respective employers have to find excuses for them and succour from elsewhere. Related:...
Antonio Conte has said he wants to avoid a Mourinho-style second season following Chelsea’s title triumph, something he should manage to achieveGuardian writers’ predicted position 2nd (NB: this is not necessarily Dominic Fifield’s prediction but the average of our writers’ tips)Last season’s position 1st Related: Premier League 2017-18 preview No4: Burnley Continue reading...
Mauricio Pochettino has bucked the trend by not adding to his Tottenham squad but the rest of the top clubs have plenty of spending left in them yetAs well as this summer being remembered for the transfer window in which just about every Premier League club tried to break their own spending record, there is a good chance it will eventually be remembered for something else. To wit: the summer when no one apart from Real Madrid knew whether they had broken a transfer record or not.Take the case of Manchester United’s Romelu Lukaku, the £90m man, as the back pages have it. When Everton sold him the price was stated at £75m plus add-ons, which might have more or...
Chelsea spotted the midfielder 12 years ago and nurtured his talents before replacing him with Tiemoué Bakayoko, a player eight times more expensiveAt about 8pm last Thursday, Nathaniel Chalobah, then still of Chelsea, posted on Instagram a picture of the former Queens Park Rangers and Crystal Palace defender Fitz Hall. The subject of several weeks of transfer rumour linking him with Swansea, Southampton and Watford, perhaps this, finally, was a clue to Chalobah’s next move. Either that, or he just likes Fitz Hall. No words accompanied the picture, though for some reason there were three alarm clocks superimposed upon it. Related: Chelsea’s erratic youth policy and why they should give the kids a chance | Jacob Steinberg Related: England’s Under-21s...