The Big Read: YSW's 2026/27 Premier League Preview:
hope, delusion and several billion pounds
Thank God for that.
After a summer in which the World Cup generally appeared to have been organised jointly by FIFA, Donald Trump and the people who schedule commercial breaks for American television, domestic football is back.
We've had hydration breaks, presidential interventions and enough Gianni Infantino to last a reasonable person several lifetimes. And who could forget Trump lingering on the podium like a confused wedding guest who'd somehow ended up in all the photographs, while Spain tried to crack on with the relatively trivial business of lifting the World Cup.
Not that the Premier League should be mistaken for some great paragon of sporting purity.
Financial regulation continues to shape the competition in increasingly peculiar ways. Aston Villa have finished fourth and won the Europa League yet spent the summer watching some of the players responsible disappear out of the door. Newcastle have seen another chunk of their established side leave. Forest and Everton know rather more than they ever wished to about football's accounting regulations.
The rules are the rules. Clubs can complain about them or learn to beat them, but for the time being they have to operate within them.
What they don't necessarily tell us is how ambitious those clubs remain.
Newcastle are perhaps the most interesting example. The richest owners in world football have spent the summer being portrayed in some quarters as having lost interest in their project, while the club itself has undergone a dramatic reset.
Yet away from the transfer market, PIF has been quietly assembling rather more permanent pieces of the jigsaw. Newcastle have acquired a substantial majority of the Grade I-listed Leazes Terrace immediately beside St James' Park. Potentially hugely significant to whatever eventually happens with the stadium, and, on the eve of the new season, announced plans to acquire the 260-acre Woolsington Hall estate for a new world-class training complex.
Owners who have supposedly lost interest are going to some fairly elaborate lengths to disguise it.
Perhaps that's one of the themes worth remembering as we head into this season. Transfer spending tells us plenty, but not everything. Some clubs are trying to win now. Some are trying to build something that lasts. Most are attempting both while navigating rules seemingly designed by people who enjoy flowcharts.
Anyway. Enough accountancy.
The grass is green.
There's something wonderful about the eve of a new season.
Impossibly green pitches. The grass freshly cut into immaculate stripes. The shirts still look slightly unfamiliar. New signings being photographed pointing at things. Nobody's called for the manager to be sacked yet.
It's football's best version of going back to school.
Except everyone actually wants to go.
For a few glorious hours, nobody has any points and everybody has hope. Even the supporters who know perfectly well they shouldn't.
Coventry can stay up. Man United might finally be back. Spurs might finish in the top half. Newcastle might not actually be experiencing the complete societal collapse we've spent the summer reading about.
Anything is possible.
By Sunday evening, naturally, several of these ideas will already look utterly ridiculous.
The Premier League returns on Friday night, when champions Arsenal welcome newly promoted Coventry City. Ten of the 20 clubs begin the campaign with a different permanent manager from the one who started last season, while summer spending has already sailed beyond €2.7bn.
Arsenal are defending champions. Pep has left Manchester City. Liverpool have a new manager. Manchester United appear worryingly functional. Chelsea have bought enough footballers to stage their own World Cup.
Sunderland are in Europe.
Bournemouth are in Europe.
Coventry are in the Premier League.
Spurs have finished 17th twice and are naturally discussing Europe.
Nobody knows anything.
Perfect.
So, in the grand tradition of season previews everywhere, here is our painstakingly researched attempt to predict what happens next, preserved online indefinitely so you can return in May and point out that we're idiots.
Arsenal: Now everyone actually expects them to win
This is unfamiliar territory.
After years of being asked whether they could get over the line, Arsenal finally did it. Now they get to discover whether getting over it was easier than staying there.
The champions have strengthened rather than celebrated. Bruno Guimarães is the headline addition, giving an already formidable midfield another player capable of controlling matches, creating chances and annoying opponents in roughly equal measure.
More importantly, Arsenal begin the season knowing exactly what they are.
That matters in a league where half their supposed rivals appear to have spent the summer changing manager, midfield, tactical philosophy or all three.
There will be pressure, of course. The hunters are now the hunted, and every dropped point will be accompanied by an emergency television graphic asking whether Arsenal have lost their edge.
Ignore it.
They look the most complete side in the division.
The vibe: Everyone spent years asking whether Arsenal could actually win it. Unfortunately for everyone else, they now know they can.
YSW prediction: 1st.
Aston Villa: Congratulations on your success. Now please sell everyone
Villa finished fourth and won the Europa League.
Traditionally this would be regarded as the moment to strengthen the squad.
Modern football has other ideas.
Morgan Rogers has gone to Chelsea. Youri Tielemans has gone to Manchester United. Digne, gone. Ezri Konsa could yet follow him out of Villa Park, while Ollie Watkins has attracted Saudi interest.
It's difficult not to sympathise.
Villa have done precisely what supposedly ambitious clubs are encouraged to do: improve the team, qualify for Europe, win something and grow.
Their reward is another summer spent staring at spreadsheets.
This isn't the place for another 2,000 words about football's increasingly impenetrable financial regulations, tempting though that is. The rules are the rules and ambitious clubs have to learn to operate within them.
But there is something slightly peculiar about a sporting system in which upward mobility can leave a club feeling compelled to dismantle bits of the thing that got it there.
Apparently sporting ambition is important, but it also helps if your stadium can host Beyoncé between fixtures.
The saving grace remains Unai Emery. Villa supporters retain enormous faith in him, and rightly so.The vibe: A very good football club being forced to play Football Manager with the accountant permanently hovering over the continue button.
YSW prediction: 7th.
Bournemouth: Europe. Actual Europe. Bournemouth.
Bournemouth finished sixth.
Read that again if necessary.
Andoni Iraola has gone to Liverpool, Marco Rose has replaced him, and Bournemouth now have European football to contend with.
The obvious concern is Thursday-Sunday football.
The less obvious concern is that we've been waiting for Bournemouth's clever recruitment machine to finally make a mistake for about eight years and it stubbornly refuses.
Their supporters seem to understand the assignment perfectly: enjoy Europe, remain competitive domestically and don't start behaving as though finishing sixth has somehow become the minimum acceptable standard.
Quite right too.The vibe: The Premier League's boutique recruitment agency, occasionally interrupted by football matches.
YSW prediction: 12th.
Brentford: Still annoyingly competent
Every summer somebody explains why Brentford's model has finally run its course.
Every spring Brentford are still there.
They missed Europe by the narrowest of margins last season and have spent accordingly, with Mamadou Sangaré the headline addition and further experience added around a squad that already knows precisely how it wants to play.
Pre-season even included a 7-0 dismantling of Eintracht Frankfurt, which is generally preferable to losing 1-0 to Stevenage and insisting it was mainly about getting minutes into legs.
The clever-club label can become patronising after a while.
Brentford aren't plucky anymore.
They're just good.
The vibe: Everybody's charming second team until they take three points off yours.
YSW prediction: 9th.
Brighton: The algorithm has found some more footballers
Danny Welbeck has gone. Jan Paul van Hecke has gone. Familiar faces continue to disappear.
No matter.
Brighton have simply fed some numbers into the machine and received another collection of people your dad hasn't heard of but Chelsea will presumably offer £126m for in 2028.
European football returns too, with the Conference League offering a perfectly realistic route towards silverware. Supporters seem more excited than apprehensive about that prospect.
At some point Brighton's recruitment operation presumably has to produce a succession of expensive disasters like everyone else's.
There is currently little evidence that anyone has told Brighton.
The vibe: Still behaving as though they've discovered a cheat code nobody else can quite download.
YSW prediction: 10th
Chelsea: Forty players enter. Eleven may leave the dressing room
Nobody can accuse Chelsea of lacking enthusiasm.
Xabi Alonso has arrived. Morgan Rogers has arrived for bonkers money. Maxence Lacroix has arrived. More footballers have arrived. Other footballers may still leave.
Summer spending has reportedly passed €400m and the squad remains enormous.
There is, however, an inconvenient fact for those of us hoping to point and laugh.
Chelsea could be very good.
Alonso is an excellent coach. There is absurd talent throughout the squad, and no European football means considerably more time on the training ground trying to turn all this expensive chaos into an actual team.
The interesting wrinkle is that Alonso has even acquired some grown-ups. Danny Welbeck and Jordan Henderson represent the sort of experience Chelsea's recruitment model previously appeared to regard as an unfortunate consequence of allowing players to age.
If Alonso gets the balance right, they're dangerous.
If not, there are enough players available to form a breakaway Chelsea and play them in the car park. They can probably sell the breakaway club back to themselves next year for £400m and preserve the status quo.
The vibe: Schrödinger's football club. Simultaneously brilliant and completely insane until somebody opens the box.
YSW prediction: 4th.
Coventry City: Frank Lampard's inconvenient redemption tour
Twenty-five years after leaving it, Coventry are back.
And they haven't arrived carrying a begging bowl.
Lampard's side scored 99 Championship goals last season, and the recruitment suggests they have no intention of immediately building a bunker around their own penalty area.
Lampard himself has urged his players to approach the Premier League without fear. Their opening reward for this admirable philosophy is Arsenal away followed by Manchester City away. Welcome back.
Still, we fancy them.
Lampard has spent several years being treated as a managerial punchline by people who aren't entirely sure why they're laughing anymore.
Keeping Coventry up would be rather amusing.
The vibe: The promoted club most likely to make everyone's August relegation predictions look stupid.
YSW prediction: 16th.
Crystal Palace: What happens after the fairy tale?
Success is lovely.
The problem is that it changes things.
Pierre Sage replaces Oliver Glasner, European football continues and the squad has changed again. There is still plenty of Premier League quality, but the challenge now is maintaining domestic consistency while enjoying the opportunities success has created.
Europe is tremendous fun right up until you're playing away on Thursday night somewhere requiring two connecting flights before Brentford arrive at noon on Sunday.
The supporters aren't panicking. Nor should they be.
But this feels like a season where squad depth gets properly examined.
The vibe: Perfectly capable of another lovely season. Also, perfectly capable of looking absolutely knackered by February.
YSW prediction: 14th.
Everton: Suspiciously normal
This is concerning.
Everton appear to have become a sensibly run football club.
There has been investment, recruitment has looked considered rather than frantic and David Moyes remains one of football's great providers of adult supervision.
Everton supporters, naturally, are deeply suspicious of all this.
They've been conditioned by experience to treat optimism like an unattended package at a railway station.
The question remains goals, but there is enough quality here to start looking towards the top half rather than calculating the distance to 18th every Sunday evening.
And if they unexpectedly challenge Europe, presumably somebody will discover an incorrectly filed lunch receipt and deduct them ten points.
The vibe: Quietly decent, which after the last decade must feel deeply unsettling.
YSW prediction: 8th.
Fulham: Real Madrid, but beside the Thames
Marco Silva has gone after five years.
Álvaro Arbeloa has arrived.
That makes Fulham one of the season's genuinely fascinating unknowns.
The former Real Madrid man has brought some familiar faces with him and spent pre-season implementing a more aggressive approach.
It could be inspired.
It could also be one of those managerial appointments everyone describes as intriguing in August and brave shortly before Christmas.
Fulham have been stable for long enough that people tend to forget stability itself is valuable.
This is a proper gamble.
The vibe: An experiment worth watching from a safe distance.
YSW prediction: 15th.
Hull City: Everyone has already relegated them
Hull haven't so much arrived in the Premier League as been immediately shown where the Championship return desk is.
Almost everybody has them down to go straight back.
And, unfortunately, you can understand why.
The play-off winners have added experience and will attempt to be organised, physical and unpleasant to play against. There are considerably worse survival strategies.
They've also been handed Manchester United and Aston Villa first, followed shortly afterwards by Chelsea and Newcastle.
Cheers, lads.
The vibe: Written off before they've finished unpacking.
YSW prediction: 20th.
Ipswich Town: This time they know where the crocodiles are
Ipswich's previous Premier League adventure was educational in much the same way that falling through a roof is educational.
They're back two years later and look considerably better prepared.
Gary O'Neil has added experience and pragmatism to a squad that knows precisely how unforgiving this league can be. Their supporters see this version as substantially more robust than the one that went down last time.
They're still in trouble, because the Premier League is horrible.
But at least they know that now.
Sometimes scar tissue is useful.
The vibe: Better equipped. Same shark tank.
YSW prediction: 19th.
Leeds United: Being Leeds, but more expensively
Daniel Farke kept Leeds up last season and reached an FA Cup semi-final.
Now comes the interesting bit: getting your feet under the table.
Recruitment has reflected that ambition, while Elland Road itself is being developed and supporters are increasingly looking towards mid-table rather than simply locating 18th place and measuring the gap.
There is genuine momentum here.
This is normally the point at which Leeds United remembers it is Leeds United and somebody sets fire to a wheelie bin.
But there is enough quality for another step forward.
The vibe: Ready to stop measuring success exclusively by distance from the relegation zone.
YSW prediction: 13th.
Liverpool: Annoyingly, probably quite good
Andoni Iraola is an excellent appointment.
There. We said it.
Mohamed Salah has gone. Andy Robertson has gone. Liverpool are undergoing genuine change.
Unfortunately, the remaining squad still contains an indecent quantity of very good footballers.
Pre-season has occasionally shown exactly what you'd expect from an Iraola transition: exhilarating pressing followed by moments where several players appear to remember simultaneously that this running around business is expected to continue for another 25 minutes.
There will be bumps.
But Iraola has earned this opportunity and Liverpool remain equipped to challenge near the top.
I'd rather they were rubbish.
They probably won't be.
The vibe: Transition, unfortunately conducted by competent people.
YSW prediction: 3rd.
Manchester City: Life after Pep
This one feels genuinely strange.
For a decade, predicting Manchester City mostly involved deciding precisely how much Pep Guardiola was going to win.
Now Enzo Maresca walks into the job while the squad changes underneath him.
Rodri has gone. Several familiar pillars of Guardiola's City have departed. Elliot Anderson has arrived for enormous money and the rebuild isn't necessarily finished.
They're still Manchester City.
Haaland remains Haaland. The squad remains frightening. The financial resources remain enormous.
But Guardiola leaving is not the same as replacing the bloke who orders the cones.
There will be an adjustment.
How much of one may decide the title.
The vibe: Still terrifying, but for the first time in years the rest of us are allowed to wonder.
YSW prediction: 2nd.
Manchester United: Please remain calm until at least September
Manchester United appear to be getting better.
This is traditionally when everybody loses their mind.
Michael Carrick did enough after taking charge last season to earn the job permanently, and United have strengthened again. Youri Tielemans adds control and experience to a midfield already containing Bruno Fernandes, while the mood around Old Trafford is considerably less apocalyptic than it has been for some time.
There is genuine reason for optimism.
There is also Manchester United.
The club has spent more than a decade periodically announcing its return to the elite before losing 2-0 at home to somebody managed by Sean Dyche.
So perhaps wait a fortnight.
The squad also deserves to be tested properly before anyone declares the restoration complete. August Manchester United has fooled us before.
The vibe: Possibly back. Terms and conditions apply.
YSW prediction: 5th.
Newcastle United: Apparently the building is on fire
If you've consumed enough football media this summer, Newcastle United have ceased to be a football club and become an unfolding humanitarian incident.
Eddie Howe has gone. Bruno Guimarães, Sandro Tonali, Anthony Gordon and Kieran Trippier have gone too. The word "crisis" has enjoyed a magnificent pre-season.
Those departures hurt. Of course they do.
But there is a small detail worth mentioning.
The spine that has supposedly been "ripped out" was the spine of a team that finished 12th.
We're not dismantling the 1970 Brazil National Team here.
The interesting part is what comes next.
Matthias Jaissle is young, intense and very different from Howe. His background is rooted in high-energy football and he arrives with a reputation for being entirely comfortable cultivating an us-against-them environment.
Which, given the prevailing atmosphere, is convenient.
Between sections of the media, social media and portions of Newcastle's own support, his siege mentality has practically been delivered ready-assembled.
Just add water.
None of this means the overhaul will work. Losing that much established quality creates enormous risk and a younger, remodelled side may need time the Premier League rarely gives anybody.
But perhaps the reset is exactly that.
A reset. Not a retreat.
And we have a sneaking suspicion Newcastle might surprise a few people.
The vibe: Much more interesting than the funeral procession we've been promised.
YSW prediction: 6th.
Nottingham Forest: Calm down, everyone
Last season contained enough managerial upheaval for several football clubs.
Forest eventually finished 16th after employing four head coaches.
Now Oliver Glasner gets a go.
There is a decent squad here. Elliot Anderson's huge move to City leaves a hole, but Ousmane Diomande strengthens an already physically imposing defence and Glasner has immediately returned to the 3-4-2-1 structure that served him well at Palace.
The most encouraging development is probably expectation itself.
Forest supporters increasingly talk about progressing, building and perhaps winning something rather than simply surviving.
Good.
Football is supposed to contain ambition.
Although if Forest accidentally qualify for the Champions League, somebody should probably begin checking their stationery cupboard for financial irregularities.
The vibe: Chaotic ambition gradually becoming simply ambition.
YSW prediction: 11th.
Sunderland: The difficult second album, now with Thursday nights
Last season was extraordinary.
Promoted Sunderland finished seventh and qualified for Europe.
Now everybody gets to discover whether that was the beginning of something or one glorious year when everything clicked.
There is plenty to like about the core of the side and a clear identity under Régis Le Bris.
The concern is quantity.
Europe changes things.
More games. More travel. More injuries. More Thursday nights followed by Sunday afternoons when the opposition have spent the previous four days sitting at home with their feet up.
And, perhaps most importantly, every Premier League opponent has now had an entire season to work Sunderland out.
Their supporters seem refreshingly realistic: enjoy Europe, stay comfortably clear of trouble and see where it takes them.
I worry slightly more than they do.
The vibe: Second-season syndrome has booked a room. Europe has offered to split the taxi.
YSW prediction: 18th.
Tottenham Hotspur - Absolutely no lessons have been learned
Tottenham finished 17th.
Then they finished 17th again.
Their supporters are now discussing Europe.
I adore football.
To be fair, this particular outbreak of optimism isn't entirely without medical explanation.
Roberto De Zerbi has arrived and Spurs have recruited aggressively. Sandro Tonali is an outstanding midfield addition, the squad contains genuine talent and there is at least the outline of a coherent footballing plan.
Which makes Tottenham particularly difficult to predict.
They could be brilliant.
They could finish fifth.
They could be explaining in February why the exciting tactical project requires another exciting tactical project.
One Spurs supporter preview magnificently offered "17th/1st" as the prediction for this season.
No notes.
The vibe: Could finish fifth. Could be on their third manager by Easter. Both somehow feel equally plausible.
YSW prediction: 17th.
So, after all that...
Our entirely scientific table, produced using extensive research, football knowledge and the traditional August method of eventually saying "sod it, that'll do":
1. Arsenal
2. Manchester City
3. Liverpool
4. Chelsea
5. Manchester United
6. Newcastle United
7. Aston Villa
8. Everton
9. Brentford
10. Brighton
11. Nottingham Forest
12. Bournemouth
13. Leeds United
14. Crystal Palace
15. Fulham
16. Coventry City
17. Tottenham Hotspur
18. Sunderland
19. Ipswich Town
20. Hull City
There.
Definitive.
Absolutely no possibility whatsoever that any of that will look stupid by Christmas.
And that's really why the eve of a new season remains one of the loveliest moments in sport.
Look at the table now.
Everyone on zero.
No crises. No six-pointers. No managers receiving the dreaded vote of confidence. No supporters doing expected-goals calculations to demonstrate why being 14th is actually fine.
Just twenty immaculate green pitches, twenty sets of supporters and twenty slightly different versions of the same irrational belief.
Maybe this is our year.
For most of them, it won't be.
Somebody will underperform spectacularly. Somebody we've confidently relegated will turn out to be annoyingly excellent. At least one expensive new signing will spend three months looking like they've won a competition to be there. A manager currently being described as visionary will be photographed leaving a training ground in the passenger seat of a Range Rover before the clocks go back.
And somewhere along the way, the Premier League will introduce a refereeing interpretation nobody entirely understands and spend six weeks explaining why an apparently identical incident is completely different.
But right now none of that has happened.
The grass is cut.
The lines are painted.
The ridiculous new third kits are hanging up.
Football's back.
See you in May, when we'll quietly delete the table.
