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The Premier League is back in just a week now, and honestly, it cannot return quickly enough. The World Cup feels like it was ages ago, and people are now so desperate for football to be back that worrying numbers of them seem to be taking pre-season results seriously. That is always a sign of distress.

There is barely any time left now. It is almost here. We have nearly got through it.

That also makes this the perfect moment to hand every Premier League club a target for the season ahead. History shows Premier League clubs are mostly silly sausages who stubbornly refuse to follow our quietly excellent advice such as ‘win the Premier League’ or ‘don’t get relegated yeah?’ but we didn’t let that stop us last season and we are not about to let it stop us now either.

Because this is simply the level at which Arsenal now exist. The Manchester City level, where anything short of winning one of the two major trophies feels underwhelming.

We are not cruel enough to insist that winning the Champions League is a compulsory target for anyone. Too many things have to click into place, there are too many variables, and simply too many other strong teams involved.

But it does feel fair to say that this should be Arsenal’s main objective this season. Having got the Premier League title drought out of the way, the next burden to remove is what remains a poor continental record for a club of Arsenal’s stature.

It is not only the complete absence of a Champions League or European Cup triumph that stands out, but Arsenal’s wider European record as well. They are English football’s third biggest and third most successful club. Yet in Europe they do not even make the top three among London clubs. That is just absurd.

Their year-by-year progress in the Champions League now reads QF-SF-RU, so yes, we would strongly advise Mikel Arteta and the lads to just carry on along that path and win the thing this year. You never know, someone else might even deal with PSG for them this time. Aston Villa, perhaps.

But winning the Premier League would do nicely too. Let us not pretend otherwise. If Arteta manages it, he would join Sir Alex Ferguson, Jose Mourinho and Pep Guardiola as the only managers to have retained the Premier League title. That is elite company, and while Arsenal fans may resist the idea that they are the big favourites, they absolutely are.

They have not had a flawless summer, but neither has it been a disaster. And they were already comfortably the standard everyone else was trying to reach. Already the side the rest were chasing with a certain sense of resignation.

With uncertainty hanging over all of their main rivals, the opportunity really is golden.

The problem for Arsenal may be post-World Cup fatigue. Of course, every club is affected to some degree, but the Gunners more than most. They had several key players involved right until the end, and a number of those players were already among the more tired ones going into the tournament.

The World Cup has also cost them the services of William Saliba for an as yet unknown period of time. That is unquestionably a major blow.

It does feel as though a huge amount depends on Arsenal’s start. They are the Man City now. They do not need to storm clear in late summer and early autumn. They do not even need to lead from the front. If they can simply stay in touch through the first half of the campaign, they are now the team that knows it can sprint away at the finish.

And if they do not? Then, in a roundabout way, it might actually help them win the Champions League, a competition in which PSG have already shown twice that if you are good enough, you do not really need to worry too much about the early weeks and months at all.

And Arsenal are good enough.

Aston Villa are now a beautifully balanced football club with a chip on both shoulders. But they are also an outstanding side under what may well be the best coach in the league.

They keep defying both Premier League and European gravity, even if the constant gloomy insistence that the Premier League and UEFA actively hate that fact has become thoroughly exhausting.

Yes, everything’s rigged against you. No, we do not know how they are allowed to spend all that money either... no, it is not fair, is it, when you have to sell some of your players. Shall we sit you down again? Fancy a nice cup of tea?

Whatever the true level of irritation Aston Villa cause the decision-makers and the suits, however many off-the-record meetings are taking place in shadowy, smoke-filled rooms to discuss how to stop these troublesome upstarts - and to be fair, it is probably more than they bother with for Newcastle, who apparently are much more capable than Villa of ruining things on their own - the reality is that Villa just keep improving, and that is hugely impressive.

They are, without question, the Premier League’s biggest overachievers since Spurs forced their way into the old big four with only a fraction of the resources Manchester City had when they did it.

We are not sure Villa received enough credit last season for qualifying for the Champions League twice. Finishing fourth or winning the Europa League would each have counted as massively successful seasons; doing both was a remarkable achievement from Unai Emery and his players.

And there is no real reason now to expect that momentum to fade. They’ve had what looks to us a textbook ‘trading club’ summer. They have cashed in hugely on a premium asset thanks to the generosity of bigger, dafter clubs and then spent smartly on a series of sharp and exciting new arrivals.

Another deep run in the Champions League knockouts seems entirely reasonable, and we would back Villa to finish in the top eight of the league phase if the draw is even remotely kind. They have reached at least a European quarter-final in each of the last three seasons, and another one is entirely possible.

Domestically too, there is no obvious reason to expect anything different from the pattern that has brought Villa fourth, sixth and fourth again over the last three campaigns.

Especially when there is so much uncertainty elsewhere. Yes, it is very likely that some of the Big Six clubs currently surrounded by question marks will turn out to be better than Villa. But some of them will almost certainly turn out to be significantly worse as well. Right now, we just do not know which will be which.

The key for Villa is that it does not especially matter which clubs go one way and which go the other.

Inspirational manager gone. Key players gone, or injured before they could leave. Concerns that simply being one of the well-run B teams would not be enough in those conditions under a manager with no previous experience of Our League.

That was Brentford last summer, although the overall picture there certainly looked much bleaker than it does for Bournemouth after Iraola. Brentford were absolutely fine, and Bournemouth being absolutely fine again while a new manager settles in would do very nicely.

Along with a cheeky little Europa League run in a competition where English clubs have built a genuinely formidable record since the format change removed those dropping in from the Champions League. Of the four English clubs to play Europa League football over the last two seasons, two have won it and the other two were knocked out only by the other English club.

There are three English clubs in it this season, and there is a very persuasive case that Bournemouth are the best placed of them all to go the distance.

No notes at all here. Just do 25/26 again, lads. You made fools of us all. Rarely, if ever, has a club that began a season under such obvious You Fear For Them, You Really Do conditions made such a mockery of those conditions.

Tits to everything else, frankly. If you are a firmly established, well-run Premier League club that has just celebrated its 125th birthday and still does not have a single major trophy, then a season in the Europa Conference League presents an opportunity that simply cannot be wasted.

The Conference was introduced to give clubs from Europe’s less wealthy leagues a competition they could realistically win. It has not really worked out that way, becoming instead a route for less wealthy clubs from rich leagues to win something tangible.

Three of the five titles have been won by English clubs. Forget Chelsea for a moment and look at the other two: West Ham and Crystal Palace.

Given the added reward of a Europa League place that comes with winning the Conference - and Brighton would absolutely have a chance of winning that in 27/28, though let us not get ahead of ourselves - then really, unless the Premier League season has gone either disastrously badly or startlingly well, by the time 2027 arrives European glory should be the priority.

Hope you are ready for the sheer molten bravura of this take, but Chelsea should be really, really good this season. They have recruited superbly, and they have brought in perhaps the most sought-after young manager in the game to bring it all together.

In a season without European football, allowing complete focus on domestic matters, Chelsea could and should be challenging right at the top given the doubts, distractions and heavier schedules affecting almost every other rival.

Counterpoint: this is Chelsea, and nothing at Chelsea is ever quite what it seems. It could obviously all be rubbish again.

But it really should not be. A Premier League season full of uncertainty and unknowns could suit Chelsea perfectly. They are used to this. They are used to beginning every season wondering whether their huge influx of signings will become anything close to a coherent whole, whether the new manager is truly the real deal, and whether he will still be there when the music stops in May.

What is for several other clubs this season a daunting but exciting leap into the unknown is, at Chelsea, simply called ‘August’.

We are not about to claim BlueCo have torn up their Player Trading Facility playbook and chosen to run Chelsea as a football club again, but there has undeniably been a shift since the appointment of an elite and uncompromising manager in Xabi Alonso, someone who will push back against egregious nonsense rather than simply be hugely grateful for the chance to put ‘Chelsea manager’ on his LinkedIn.

There have still been plenty of transfers that fit Chelsea’s existing model. Even the headline nine-figure move for Morgan Rogers is not out of character given his age and profile. And of course there has been the obligatory approval of a previously completed deal for a Strasbourg player that must surely have involved some intense and difficult negotiations. Bonus points for the fact that player is World Cup pantomime villain Valentin Barco.

And the usual speculative, low-risk, potentially high-reward signings of young talents have continued as normal, with the understanding now that the high reward is more about selling them on for profit than any serious belief they might benefit Chelsea’s first team.

But there have also been plenty of transfers of a completely different kind. Ones that do not fit the post-takeover Chelsea pattern at all.

In Maxence Lacroix they have signed a defender who is a good centre-back but is hardly going to generate huge profits on spreadsheets in years to come. The only possible and slightly alarming conclusion is that he has been bought to improve the actual football team rather than the balance sheet. Which is unsettling, honestly.

And that is before we even get to the signings of proper veterans in Danny Welbeck and Jordan Henderson. Welbeck has shown at Brighton that he absolutely still has it and could prove to be one of the smartest bargain buys of the summer at a club that does not usually do that sort of thing.

As for Henderson, well, you never know when an advertising board will need hopping over or some cones will need laying out. But there is a fair argument that, as well as a proper coach, what this confused, confusing, disjointed and lopsided group of footballers really needed in order to become a functioning squad was the presence of some Good Pros around the place.

They have that now, along with one of the best midfields in the league - possibly with Martin Zubimendi still to come - and a defence that ought to be far less pathetic than last season’s thanks to Lacroix’s arrival and the return of Levi Colwill from long-term injury.

Winning the title itself still feels like a stretch target - although if there is one Premier League club with previous for leaping from mid-table embarrassment to champions in a single move under an inspirational new manager, it is Chelsea - but they really should be there, or at the very least thereabouts.

Proper signings for a proper manager and no annoying European football to get in the way? Blue really might be the colour.

Let us not overthink this one. Be Leeds. Be Sunderland if at all possible. Just do not be any of the other promoted clubs from the last three years. Simple. But will they listen? That is the question.

Crystal Palace have just enjoyed the best two years in their history. We do not expect 2026/27 to sit alongside them in the story of great Selhurst seasons.

We are not quite at Fear For Them, You Really Do levels, and they have made an interesting and potentially brilliant choice to replace Oliver Glasner after his transformative spell.

But it is also very easy to see how this season could go badly wrong for Palace given the scale of the change.

It feels a shame to undersell what may be coming after what has just gone before, but one of those classic Crystal Palace seasons where they finish 13th with 40-49 points and never seriously flirt with relegation sounds perfectly acceptable right now.

The more optimistic framing would be to say they should make sure their league position is secure enough that they can spend the final few months of the campaign trying to win the Europa League a la Tottenham 24/25. And before long they might yet have their best season of all to show for it.

When we were doing the Mood Rankings last week, we got to Everton and realised they were the one Premier League club we had not given a second thought to all summer.

That is not necessarily a bad thing. Quiet can be nice. And it may work hugely in their favour. There is something to be said for being the steady, known quantity in a season where so many clubs are in transition that the Premier League itself almost feels transitional.

Until they suddenly turned up alongside Crystal Palace to complete a genuinely mad, almost-never-seen swap deal that sends Dwight McNeil south and brings Brennan Johnson to the Hill Dickinson, they had done almost nothing to attract attention in a summer when nearly everyone else has been operating at varying levels of madness.

It really should not be the case that ‘Haven’t changed their manager, preferring instead to stick with the one they appointed over 18 months ago!’ makes you an outlier, but that is where we now are in a Premier League that has gone mad.

David Moyes is, absurdly, the seventh longest-serving current manager among the 20 Premier League clubs this season. Among clubs that have been in the Premier League for that entire period, he rises to fourth behind only Mikel Arteta, Unai Emery and Fabian Hurzeler.

A low-key summer does not mean a bad one. We are gloriously unsure who has got the better end of that swap deal that finally pushed Everton back into the wider conversation. But the fun of it is that for both Palace and Everton it feels like, ‘Well, it cannot really be worse than what we had.’

The rest of Everton’s business looks fairly smart to us. Christian Norgaard could appear on all sorts of bargain lists, while last season’s loans for Tyrique George and Merlin Rohl have now been made permanent.

The most impressive move of all, though, could be the snaffling of Hayden Hackney from Middlesbrough for a fee that makes him almost entirely risk-free.

There is some strong recent evidence supporting the value of the Championship-to-Premier League pipeline for young English midfielders.

We are not saying Hackney is another Adam Wharton or Alex Scott, but we are definitely not saying he is not. He was one of the best players anywhere in the Championship last season and deserves this opportunity.

So yes, it is impressive business. But quietly impressive. Sensible. No-nonsense. And it all raises the question of what success actually looks like for Everton this season.

Is it as simple as another ultimately dull season like 25/26? That initially felt acceptable because there are obvious on-pitch complications involved in moving to a new stadium, and in the end because of how very far from dull the season became for certain clubs at or above Everton’s level.

We are not convinced that merely existing will be enough for another year. It feels as though we are spinning rather quickly through the Everton cycle towards the point where they start wanting something more. Start craving excitement again.

We understand that. We do not even disagree with it. But it worries us. Because with Everton, what generally happens when they understandably grow tired of the quiet is that the noise that follows is usually exactly the wrong sort.

Usually it is the very loud and very unpleasant sort of relegation battle noise. The sort that leads to smug Ollie Holt columns about being careful what you wish for.

We have a sneaking suspicion that Moyes could be a live outsider in this season’s Sack Race. He probably will not win it because one of the many Premier League clubs with a new manager is bound to make a dreadful start and slam the panic button, but we would not be remotely shocked if ennui took hold at Everton should it begin to look like another dull, safe mid-table campaign.

We always try not to tell fans off for wanting more. It is absolutely right that mere Premier League survival should not always be enough for Everton. But with Everton, we do always worry.

Because what comes after the quiet never seems to be the right kind of noise, does it?

It will probably all be fine, but we do worry about Fulham as well. We might even fear for them. Marco Silva’s departure has not been the highest-profile exit of a long-serving Premier League manager this summer, but that does not mean it will not be hugely significant.

Fulham have become reliable mid-table steady eddies over the last few years, but all of that inevitably feels a little at risk now that the manager responsible has gone, along with a couple of key on-field architects.

The Cottagers are one of several clubs we suspect may be rather grateful that they are where they are in this particular season, with this particular group of promoted sides, rather than last year’s.

The good news for Hull is that this is pretty much exactly where we were with Sunderland at this point last year: just be better than the worst Premier League team of all time.

So the only logical conclusions here are a) we know nothing and b) congratulations on qualifying for the 2027/28 Europa League, Hull City.

Is it facetious or glib to suggest that Sheeran’s infamous post-match interruption after a 1-1 draw against Manchester United in Ruben Amorim’s first game was the moment it all began to go wrong for Ipswich the last time they were in the Premier League?

No, it is not. They had just taken five points from three games against Leicester, Spurs and United and were right on the brink of escaping the bottom three.

Then along came Sheeran. Ipswich lost five of their next six, never climbed out of the bottom three again, and eventually finished a distant 16 points from safety.

It was also the beginning of the end for Amorim, if you think about it.

Ipswich! Please control your global megastar.

The stretch target is certainly a stretch, but they are talking a good game and are coming off the back of an excellent summer. They have every chance to properly re-establish themselves as a genuine Premier League club this season, one that should at the very least be far too strong for the latest trio of promoted teams.

They should not be in relegation trouble and should therefore be free to aim for more, especially after the way they finished the 25/26 season. Once you drag yourself clear of the very worst dregs of the division, you do not actually need to do that much more to be better than a lot of other teams and chop your way through the thick undergrowth of mid-table to emerge blinking into the top-half sunlight.

Leeds, a club that has made it clear that mere survival is only the starting point rather than the limit of its ambition, can absolutely do exactly that.

What we like about this fairly standard Big Six target is that it could look very silly in either direction very quickly.

We would not be remotely surprised if Liverpool’s new manager suddenly gets a tune out of all the good players the previous manager could not make work and the club ends up right in the blazing heat of the title race.

We also would not be remotely surprised if they win only one of their first six and be forced into a desperate managerial change before the year is out.

And what we really enjoy is that exactly the same scenario applies to about five different clubs.

It has been said before and it will be said again, but this really could be the most gloriously chaotic season we have ever seen.

Things cannot really get any lower than this for Manchester City. Even with a new manager and all the uncertainty that comes with that.

If Arsenal really are too tired and too drained by fatigue to make a fast start, then Manchester City are uniquely placed to take advantage. Specifically because they are Manchester City. Arsenal would feel reasonably confident about hunting down anyone else if required, but seeing City disappear into the distance would feel very different.

A lot of this obviously depends on the new manager. We rate Maresca as a coach, but our lingering concern is the tendency he showed at Chelsea to think a little too small. Whether it was expectation management or self-preservation, he did manage to successfully talk them out of a couple of title-race-adjacent situations.

We do not want to hear any of that this season. No talk of transition, even if he would actually be partly right to say it. We can already almost hear him pointing out that Guardiola could not win the title in either of his final two seasons at City.

He must not do that. Just as we must not let our own heads overheat and start heading for Mars over scenarios we have entirely invented in our own minds to irritate ourselves.

We are much less sure about Manchester United than other people seem to be. Much less convinced by the undeniably impressive form they showed under Michael Carrick in the second half of last season.

To us, it all felt a bit like Easy Mode. One game a week. No real pressure. Plenty of easy gains for a manager for whom simply not being the cartoonishly mule-headed version Ruben Amorim became was enough.

But to be clear, we are not saying it was definitely a fluke or an illusion. We are just saying we worry that it might have been. If it was not, and Manchester United really are a good team and Carrick really is a good manager, then happy days.

So there is the season target: prove it. If they do, then who knows where that could lead, because what is undeniable is that the second half of last season, absurdly enough, gives United more proof of concept about the structure they will carry into this season than anyone else in the Big Six apart from Arsenal.

A Tottenham-level desperate last-ditch escape won’t cut it, but it really could become that hairy - or even worse if any of the promoted trio turn out to have even a little bit of Sunderland or Leeds about them - for a side that has had the guts ripped out of it this summer and whose new manager has already admitted they cannot possibly be ready for a season starting a little over a week from now.

It is alarmingly easy to imagine how a poor start could snowball and make last season’s mild disappointments look like a golden age.

You have got a really, really good one now, yes? And a squad that looks genuinely capable. Let us see what happens if that really, really good manager and that really capable-looking squad get an entire season together. Imagine that.

This may be the silliest and most far-fetched of all these calls.

With Sunderland, we get the feeling that Second-Season Syndrome is almost being wished into existence. There is a danger it becomes self-fulfilling.

It has obviously been a quieter summer than last year, but that was inevitable - desirable, even.

But they do look a little short on numbers for a four-competition season, something they surely could not have expected at this stage last year. The possibility that the Thursday-Sunday grind becomes draining if nervous glances over shoulders are needed in the Premier League is obvious. So... just do not let that happen. Do not spend the season looking over your shoulder. Stay well away from all of that ugliness.

Very good and very obvious advice that a surprising number of clubs have somehow ignored over the years.

Pre-season is always an exciting period of uncertainty and hope and fear, a time when all the many possible paths of the next 10 months lie open in front of you and there is not yet any certainty about which one will be yours.

But this summer has, if anything, for me, Clive, almost a little too much uncertainty about too many clubs.

Spurs may be the hardest of the lot to judge. There are lots of other clubs we find difficult to predict this season, but with all of those we still feel we have a fair idea of what would count as a passing-grade campaign.

For Chelsea and Manchester United, for example, Champions League qualification feels like an obviously reasonable target. That does not mean they will achieve it. It does not mean they will not exceed it either. But it feels about right.

The same goes for a team like Leeds. Building on the way they ended last season and on the back of a good summer, pushing themselves right into the middle of the pack or perhaps just into the top half would represent real, measurable and, above all, acceptable progress.

But what counts as a successful season for Spurs? We honestly do not really know. Based on last season, they are relegation battlers, and not particularly good ones. Based on this summer, they’re genuine contenders. So which is it?

Even simply saying ‘somewhere in the middle’ does not really work. Would Spurs actually be happy finishing, say, ninth this season? They probably should be, but we do not think they would be.

And yet anything more than that feels like a big ask of a team that has been the best of the worst in the last two relegation fights, albeit by a very long way in the first of those.

So we are going to cheat. We all know Roberto De Zerbi to be two things. First, a very good football coach. Second, a combustible character who is quick to anger when things do not go his way, whether that is on the pitch, in the transfer market, or a little from both column A and column B.

Therefore, if he is still Spurs manager at the end of the season, then almost by definition Spurs will have had an acceptable campaign. By his standards at least, and right now those seem as reasonable a benchmark as any.