Pre-season Premier League Moods in a chaotic summer where not even Arsenal seem happy

We’re getting our excuses in very, very early here with our pre-season assessment of the Premier League moods. Because it does seem almost uniquely impossible to accurately gauge how anyone’s feeling ahead of a season where so many teams both large and… less large have such a vast range of potential outcomes.

There are just so many new managers, so much uncertainty, so many teams who could be top of the table or in an unwelcome relegation fight by Christmas that picking up one scent from each club about how things are going is all but impossible.

We thought the one thing that was fairly safe was that Arsenal, the defending champions and the one big club where some kind of certainty and stability prevails, would be feeling pretty good about life. But nagging doubts and uncertainty have taken hold even there.

Then you’ve got your Aston Villas, where objectively correct excitement and optimism about the business they have done has been entirely swallowed up by bitter whingeing about what those beastly Premier League bean-counters won’t let them do.

There’s just no unanimous consensus anywhere about anyone. Not even at Newcastle, where there remain alarming numbers of people, many of them professional journalists, who don’t think they’re f*cked.

20) Newcastle

It’s interesting to read the replies on X-formerly-Twitter to Luke Edwards’ attempt to convince Newcastle fans – and quite possibly himself – that everything might be okay despite a summer that has now seen the club lose three of its best players and manager.

‘It’s been a car-crash summer but Newcastle 2.0 can still work’ is a headline that has certainly caught the attention of Newcastle Twitter.

And what makes it interesting is that they are largely unanimous in being furious about it. Just for two completely opposing reasons.

There are those unwilling at this time to accept any kind of optimism about what might be in store for Newcastle in the short, medium or long-term. This is, it has to be noted, the majority voice.

But there’s also a sizeable minority of happy-clappers whose displeasure is aimed not at the idea that everything might still turn out just about okay somehow but that it’s even been a car crash at all. To us, that’s a fascinating point of view.

We have to believe it’s copium, because it’s been a worse summer than Newcastle could possibly have feared. And they feared another troubled one on the back of a harrowing 2025 summer and horribly disappointing 25/26 season.

Mediawatch has dealt in some detail with Edwards’ piece, but a key point for us is the idea that losing a manager and, across the last 12 months, four of the biggest and most significant players in the squad and then replacing them with a manager who has no big-league experience and a host of young, inexperienced players is a plan that ever really works well for anyone, anywhere.

There is, as wry old Mediawatch put it, more than a hint in Edwards’ desperation to apply some kind of positive spin of the Arrested Development ‘but it might work for us’ meme.

Perhaps more importantly still, even in this attempt to put the most positive possible spin imaginable on recent events there’s an acceptance of failure.

The plan for Newcastle 2.0 is to become a bigger version of the admirable and canny B teams – your Brightons, your Brentfords, your Bournemouths.

Two issues here. First, even if that works, it’s a failure. Because that is simply not the vision the fans were offered when being asked to sell their soul to the Saudis. Newcastle fans didn’t entirely throw away the vast amount of goodwill that genuinely did exist towards the club to become a slightly heftier version of Brighton.

They were promised – or at least certainly expected – a pathway to Man City or Chelsea success levels that might feasibly justify the means and create enough noise to quiet down those pesky voices inside their heads.

Being Bournemouth but on a slightly larger scale was never going to be worth all of the trauma.

But there’s a second and even more fundamental issue. It won’t work. It can’t work. Newcastle cannot be just a slightly bigger version of the B teams because that isn’t a thing that exists. That is not a place in the food chain Newcastle are willing to accept.

This is a club whose supporters have started an online discourse over whether Arsenal are even meaningfully bigger than they are.

Newcastle 2.0 appears to be a club busily turning a floor into a ceiling, not so much seeking to curb expectations as crush any lingering ambition or even hope altogether.

How do they achieve escape velocity from their new reduced circumstances? There were no guarantees that trying to become a proper member of the Big Six/Seven/Eight/Whatever would work, but at least it plausibly could have. If, in the wildly unlikely event all these very talented but very, very raw new ingredients do by some alchemic miracle produce a team capable of challenging the top six, what stops them all just being picked off if Newcastle are just striving to be the Biggest Bees?

The current crop have been picked off at a time when Newcastle have, at least in theory, carried loftier ambition to try and convince those stars whose stock has risen so high during their time in black and white that they could achieve their goals here.

How to do that with a next generation where even that possibility apparentlyno longer applies?

A catastrophic worst-case scenario just looks so much likelier for Newcastle now than any best-case scenario. And not only because we’re no longer sure what a best-case scenario even looks like for a club that qualified for the Champions League only 15 months ago but has been doom-spiralling ever since.

In summary, then: things seem far more likely to go badly than to go well. And even if they do go well on the club’s newly stated terms, they’re still probably quite bad.

It could be a long old season on Tyneside.

19) Fulham

Are they in You Fear For Them territory? They really are. The departure of Marco Silva had started to feel inevitable, but that doesn’t mean we have to like it. He had become one of the few reliable constants in the swirling whirligig of the managerial merry-go-round.

You always knew what you’d get from Silva, and thus from Fulham. That certainty is gone.

After a summer featuring nine managerial changes among the 20 Premier League clubs – while two more have managers only appointed this year – it’s not like Fulham’s unpredictable uncertainty is unique.

But it is one of the places where it feels most stark. They have, to our mind, made the least convincing managerial appointment of the mid-table pack who have chosen or been forced down that road.

Throw in a squad that in every position looks short on either numbers, quality or both and it’s easy to get concerned. Especially with last season’s talisman Harry Wilson having toddled off up north to Leeds.

18) Aston Villa

Another awkward summer for Villa, but you’d like to think we’d all learned the lesson from last year that if there’s one club where awkward summers – and even tricky starts to the season, if it comes to that – need not vex unduly it’s Villa. As long as Unai Emery is there, everything will be fine.

They’ve actually done what looks like some very decent just-below-the-elite-tier-trading-club business this summer. Big money for Morgan Rogers, reinvested in all manner of exciting directions – most notably Johan Manzambi.

And yet the overwhelming emotion bleeding out of the club this summer is one of resentment and frustration and a general teenage-howling of it’s just not fair.

We do think Aston Villa fans would be happier if they stopped aiming their frustrations at not being able to spend money they don’t have towards a Tottenham team spending money they do.

It’s obviously #NotAllVillaFans, but a large number of Villa fans do keep asking the same question even after it has been answered several times. Can only conclude at this point they just don’t really want to hear an obvious but boring answer that involves two decades of development and building the best stadium in the country and spending so careful that it reached a nadir of going three transfer windows without a single signing.

We get why Villa – and Newcastle – see Spurs’ spending as the most overtly frustrating when they themselves feel shackled by the rules, because Spurs always feel the closest of the ‘Big Six’ to the rest even when they aren’t the conspicuously weakest of that group on the pitch as they have so hilariously been for the last two years.

But Spurs are not the villains here. They are a roadmap on how to crash the party where the real villains are actually to be found, but they are also a reminder that the only route to that status that doesn’t involve just cutting corners and taking shortcuts is long and hard and neither Villa nor Newcastle really want to hear that. Understandable, but unhelpful, we’d suggest.

17) Crystal Palace

It all comes down to whether Pierre Sage turns out to be an Oliver Glasner or a Frank de Boer. It does feel like it could absolutely be either.

His Glasner-esque credentials are sound. If you’re manager of a French club that isn’t PSG, then winning the Coupe de France and finishing a fairly close second in the league is really very much as good as it reasonably gets for anyone. But the thing with France is that it is still France.

This is not France. This is England, mate. You know, proper football.

And while the new manager is a bold and interesting choice it’s asking a lot to bottle lightning twice. It’s asking an awful, awful lot for him to be another Glasner.

And there really isn’t very much to get excited about in their summer transfer business thus far, with the loss of Maxence Lacroix to Chelsea meaning it is currently a weaker squad than last season’s Conference League winners that will embark on a Europa League season under a new, impressive but less proven manager.

They are not the only team this season for whom European football could become an albatross, but they are absolutely one of those teams. Which brings us neatly to…

16) Sunderland

We absolutely don’t want to p*ss on anyone’s chips when they are excited about being back in Europe just one season after being back in the Premier League.

We don’t want to do that. But it doesn’t mean we won’t in fact do that. Because it is alarmingly easy to picture this being the most Second Season Syndrome campaign ever witnessed.

There’s been nothing like last season’s squad-transforming transfer splurge. Understandable in one sense, because there was no need to perform the same amount of surgery on a squad that is now of Premier League standard, which with the best will in the world was not true of the one that got promoted.

But the additional challenge that comes with at least eight Europa League games is very real. Continuity is good, but without at least a handful of extra bodies the European tour can all too quickly become a European burden.

Does feel like a good start to the domestic season before the extra workload kicks in will be vital. If Sunderland hit the Europa League treadmill feeling good about life, it could all be tremendous fun.

Ipswich, Fulham, Brentford isn’t a bad trio of games to try and kick off the season with feel-good vibes. But playing that first Europa League game in between hosting Arsenal and going to Man City has momentum-halting buzzkill potential out the wazoo.

15) Everton

You could be forgiven for forgetting Everton exist this summer. While chaos and panic and wild dreams of unprecedented glory swirl around the other corners of the Premier League, at Everton it’s been quiet.

They haven’t even replaced their manager. They’ve made some decent looking signings, but in keeping with Everton’s trend-bucking approach this summer it’s all quietly decent stuff.

And so it will remain until they go mental and decide to sack David Moyes in November and everyone notices them again.

14) Nottingham Forest

If any other club upgraded their manager from Vitor Pereira to Oliver Glasner between seasons, you’d be feeling enormously optimistic about them. We still do feel that way a fair bit about Nottingham Forest, especially if they can keep Morgan Gibbs-White until the window closes.

But this is also undeniably the club above all others – with perhaps the possible exception of Chelsea – where any excitement about the appointment of a really excellent manager has to be tempered by just how quickly it could all come to a juddering halt.

One wrong word, one wrong look, and Glasner could be out on his arse like so many before him.

There’s no denying that Mr Marinakis, absurd cartoon supervillain that he may be, has done an awful lot right at Forest. This is a club in a far, far better position now than could have been dreamt of even five years ago.

But at some point he surely does have to allow one manager to have a proper go at taking things a stage further. Managers have never before felt quite so disposable in the Premier League as they do now, yet even in that context Forest are an absurd standout.

A club that had 15 permanent managers between 1889 and 1993 are now on their fifth since the start of last season.

The latest and for now current choice is surely the best of the five and the optimism is real and understandable. But the simple fact is that not one person reading this would be remotely surprised if Glasner were gone by November and replaced by, oh, let’s say… Moe.

13) Ipswich Town

The only one of the promoted teams who would’ve fully expected to be in this position at the start of last season, and thus the most disappointing of a trio who haven’t really done anything much this summer to suggest they’re going to cook.

Not every promoted team is going to have Leeds’ heft, and that’s fine, but last summer also brought us Sunderland. Nobody expected them to do as well as they did, but in hindsight the signs were there in a summer where at the very, very least they made it clear they were going to give Premier League survival a proper red-hot crack having surprised themselves as much as anyone by finding themselves in the top flight.

None of the promoted trio have that vibe this summer. Ipswich have made a few eye-catching signings, most notably Brazilian striker Emersonn, who only looks like a typo.

But they’re all speculative signings. There’s nothing reliably solid about any of it. Sure, Kieran McKenna’s departure has disrupted things, and bringing in Gary O’Neil does at least show a willingness to try and fight for their Premier League life.

We’re just a touch underwhelmed is all. It’s all a bit, dare we say it, Norwich. We had hoped Ipswich might take more of a Fulham approach to trying to shift the yo-yo tag after bouncing back up.

12) Manchester City

Interesting times at the Etihad as they take the first tentative steps into the post-Pep world. We all knew it would have to happen one day, but doesn’t mean it’s any less weird now we’re here.

It’s also a Manchester City without John Stones and Bernardo Silva and quite possibly Rodri. It is a very new era indeed.

It wasn’t as blatant as the way Sir Fergie anointed the Moyesiah as his successor, but it does also feel very much like Enzo Maresca is a Pep-approved continuity candidate. We find it all a bit unconvincing.

We’re not saying Maresca is about to go Full Moyes, he has a bit too much about him for that and hasn’t been left a squad in anything like the mess Ferguson left for his ill-starred successor all those years ago.

But try as we might we find it really, really hard to envision Maresca being a success at City. He’s a good coach, but one with a tendency to talk his teams down in what we assume is an attempt at self-preservation but ends up becoming a bit self-fulfilling and ultimately self-defeating. Maybe he’ll be a different beast at City than he was at Chelsea.

For all the superficial similarities between the two nouveau riche clubs, they operate in very different ways and City are the ones that place the actual football most firmly front and centre.

It feels like a less impossible job in the sense of not actively having to fight against the primary goal of the organisation. But we’re not sure who could follow Guardiola without looking like a pale imitation. Appointing a literal pale imitation is either genius or madness.

It’s just a very, very long time since we’ve expected less from Man City at this time of the year. Roughly as long as it is since we’ve been unconvinced by their manager.

Ergo, they will win the Premier League by 10 points.

11) Tottenham

We love Spurs. Such an absurd club in so many ways. And this summer they have managed the neat trick of boiling all of the p*ss. Rival fans’ p*ss by finally spending some of their money. Their own fans’ p*ss by still not spending enough of it or in the right way.

And you do have to say that’s magnificent. For a good 20 years we’ve heard the same complaints from Spurs fans: why can’t we just spend big money on Prem-proven players? Why can’t we start acting like a big club? Why do we always have to take a punt on younglings or foreigns from the silly little leagues they have over there on the continent?

This summer Spurs have spent big money on very Prem-proven players and the response from a large chunk of their fanbase has been: “No, not like that.”

We do kind of understand it. We suppose the very understandable fear here is that rather than the start of a new normal at Tottenham, what we’ve actually got here is a one-off summer of frenzied activity to try and put right transfer wrongs going back a decade or more.

If this summer’s spending is a one-off, then you can see why it’s a bit underwhelming. A bit belt-and-braces. All that money has been chucked at a series of very good footballers, but it’s all for now gone in to improving the defence and midfield.

And it is still big attacking signings that really grab you by the bollards, isn’t it? That’s just human nature.

It’s very clear what Roberto De Zerbi is trying to do with the demands he’s laid out for his first summer as Spurs boss. That heavy investment in the defence and midfield was absolutely necessary for a team that had become so weak in those areas. Spurs, for the last two years, have been unforgivably easy both to attack and defend against.

At the very least now they should be harder to attack against. De Zerbi has grasped that the first priority with the p*ss-poor squad he inherited was to massively raise the floor before worrying about the ceiling.

But Spurs fans would really like something flashy for that ceiling. Savinho is a chandelier, is what we’re saying here.

Overall, we’d file Spurs among the many currently under the ‘cautiously optimistic’ umbrella. They better than anyone know how quickly things can go full Spurs, and how meaningless ‘winning the transfer window’ can really be. But there’s also no denying that the business Spurs have done should make them far, far better – and far, far better to watch – than they were in that dismal 25/26.

How far it lifts them is hard to know and will depend so much on so many other teams who are equally hard to predict at this time.

But we do also find it a bit rich that there are Spurs fans out there grumbling at all about their summer’s exploits when the absurd but undeniable reality is that if Guglielmo Vicario hadn’t done his groin they would now be in the Championship hoping against hope they could keep hold of Will Lankshear and Kevin Danso.

Also we think Spurs fans will feel a lot happier once Cristian Romero has been fired out of a cannon in the general direction of Milan or Madrid after he aimed one final indignity at a club that made him their captain 12 months ago by eagerly and openly twerking for their most hated rivals despite knowing such a move would not and could not happen.

10) Liverpool

Cautious optimism also seems to be the prevailing mood around Anfield. We’d go along with that.

But as with so many other clubs at the start of this season, the eye-opening thing is just how vast the range of possibilities feels.

In Liverpool’s case it feels entirely plausible that Iraola gets far more out of the 2025 arrivals than Arne Slot could manage and a big fat title challenge ensues. Absolutely none of that feels like the imaginings of a deluded pipe-dream-addled mind.

But we simply don’t trust any mind that, even if it considers that glass-half-full scenario the most likely outcome, isn’t at least devoting one small, dark corner to thoughts of ‘but what if Iraola starts with one of those 10-game winless runs he likes so much rather than one of those 20-game unbeaten runs he also enjoys?’

We like Iraola a huge amount, but there’s simply no doubt he’s now positioned himself under a spotlight where the ludicrous peaks and troughs that defined his Bournemouth reign won’t be tolerated.

At Bournemouth, the unbeaten runs caught the eye while the winless runs simply went unnoticed. If he carries on with that caper at Anfield it will be very much the other way round.

9) Brentford

Brentford’s 2025 summer was the perfect example of why it just doesn’t do to get too agitated by any of the comings or goings or trials and tribulations that can besiege the off-season football fan.

It was by any reasonable measure one of the most harrowing summers an established Premier League club could endure. They lost the manager who had made them such an established Premier League club, both players largely responsible for the goals that had kept that status the previous season, and the club captain.

They replaced the manager with a rookie continuity candidate and the departed players largely from within the existing squad.

Brentford were the ultimate ‘You fear for them’ side last summer. The outcome? They were absolutely fine. If anything, slightly better than before.

So there was unlikely to be any wild mood swings at a club now enjoying a far less eventful summer. Such is the absurd quantity of flux kicking off around the rest of the league this year that Brentford, with no wholesale squad changes and a manager who’s been in place for a whole year, are now – 12 months on from all that upheaval – actually something close to a settled and known quantity.

It is a very curious era of Barclays into which we’re all about to embark.

8) Bournemouth

There’s no point pretending the loss of Andoni Iraola doesn’t sting, but Bournemouth knew this day would come. They are, like the other B Teams, well versed in this kind of summer upheaval and just keeping on.

They’ve also lost Marcos Senesi to Spurs but have thus far avoided any other high-profile departures from the existing squad. Always feels to us that when an inspirational manager steps up in class as Iraola has this summer there is always a lot of noise about players following him to his new digs but that it is mainly just that.

A lot of transfer reporting amounts to taking a couple of twos and coming up with a plausible way that they may in fact equal five, and this ‘reunited with his former manager’ trope feels like one of them.

Still a fair amount of time left in the window for things to change, but for now there still seem to be ample reasons for optimism around a squad that has lots to like about it.

But the uncertainty that comes with a new manager is inevitable and understandable and valid. Especially when it’s a manager entirely new to Our League despite a strong history of being linked with your Tottenhams and the Newcastles of this world.

Still, though. Does all seem remarkably and impressively chipper at Bournemouth given the panic that would’ve swept a dafter club at the disappointing but hardly shocking news that their brilliant manager was moving on.

7) Manchester United

We are very convinced Man United will be one of the biggest disappointments – if that’s the right word – of the season.

The one-game-a-week easy mode under which they were able to operate, and the not-being-Amorim easy mode under which Michael Carrick was able to operate, are gone. Replaced by a proper Man United season with four competitions and sky-high expectations.

Viewed in the cold light of a summer’s morning, they’ve got a distinctly unproven manager with little transfer pull and thus transfer business that leaves us, at best, whelmed.

Youri Tielemans is a very shrewd bit of business but no more nor less than that. Shouldn’t feel like the standout headline act of a summer’s work as it currently does. This is, after all, Manchester United Football Club We’re Talking About.

But the vibe we’re getting from United fans currently is one of broad contentment. And there’s no doubt that an early season schedule featuring Hull, Ipswich and Everton offers the chance to make an eye-catching start to the campaign.

We’re not at all convinced about United ourselves, but even we can see how the Manchester derby in mid-September could be a top-of-the-table clash.

6) Brighton

They’ve got a good manager who’s been in the job for over two years. The list of Premier League clubs currently able to say that is absurdly short.

Have, as ever, bought shrewdly while selling at top dollar. Jan Paul van Hecke will be missed, but effectively coming out a few million up with Spurs from trading him for Luka Vuskovic could look like Brighton’s most spectacular transfer coup yet in a few years’ time, and with all due respect to Carl Rushworth and his exploits on loan for Coventry last season, the 25-year-old wouldn’t be anyone’s idea of someone who might figure on a list of the most expensive goalkeepers ever.

While the word of the day across the Premier League this summer has been chaos, Brighton just keep on keeping on. They’ll be very good again this season, and do so in a campaign where the potential for multiple big beasts to fall flat on their faces is high.

They also have a wonderful chance at winning a trophy having secured England’s spot in the Europa Conference League, which Premier League clubs have won in three of the last four seasons. There’s very real chance that Brighton don’t just have a good season, but their greatest ever. They could be the new Palace, who themselves look destined to go back to being the old Palace.

5) Chelsea

Looked at coldly and logically, they should be really, really good this season. They’ve bought incredibly well, and have brought in perhaps the most sought-after young manager in the game to pull the whole thing together.

In a season with no European football, allowing a laser focus on domestic matters, Chelsea could and should be challenging right at the top given the doubts and distractions and greater workloads everywhere else you look.

Counterpoint: this is Chelsea, and nothing at Chelsea is ever as it seems.

4) Hull City

It’s going to be fascinating to watch this unfold. We have long held the view that a team that battles their way through the Championship by defying the numbers and stats might be better placed to have a crack at the Premier League than teams that have dogwalked the division and then get a rude shock when they can’t do that any more in the top flight.

We don’t understand how, for instance, Burnley are constantly surprised every time they p*ss their way through a Championship season that it suddenly gets a lot harder in the Premier League. You’d think they’d have twigged by now.

But Hull, the clever sausages, will have no problem adapting to the Premier League being hard because they made the Championship look hard. It might be genius.

It also might have Derby fans interested until well into the second half of the season.

3) Arsenal

Arsenal have reached a stage now where even disappointing days are a reminder of just how far they’ve climbed in recent years, and just how absurdly well placed they now are. Yet those disappointing days do currently seem to be carrying undue weight for an oddly restless fanbase.

When we suggested Arsenal were obviously top of any mood rankings, we were swiftly and repeatedly told no. We don’t really understand it, but must respect that data.

But it seems mad to us.

In a summer of unprecedented Premier League flux, Arsenal are the only thing offering anything close to a predictable, reliable central point around which everything else can orbit.

If we accept the tentative existence of a Big Eight, Arsenal are the only one where this is true. Six – six! – of the other eight have a manager who only came into the job this year. Four of those managers were only appointed this summer.

And the other team in that group who do have the same manager have suffered the loss of a vital player.

Arsenal are the only team for whom changes have been entirely on their own terms.

Even the ‘disappointments’ of the last 24 hours have to be viewed in comparison to the utter steps into the unknown being taken absolutely everywhere else. Arsenal’s setbacks over the last day or so amount to probably not signing Vinicius Junior, something nobody could have reasonably considered the dealbreaker for the success or otherwise of the summer when it began.

That this crushing low has come in the very week where they complete the signing of Bruno Guimaraes only further cements the point of just how hard you have to try to make things look bleak for Arsenal right now.

But we do admire the effort, especially a particularly concerted one from sections of the press to convince anyone that they should care about a pre-season defeat to Real Betis.

There were actual headlines suggesting it threatened Arsenal’s title hopes. This is, obviously, a hilarious state of affairs.

It is always absurd to get hot and bothered about pre-season results at any time, but especially so when it’s Arsenal – the one team/manager/squad combination among the Premier League’s leading lights who can claim to hit this season with no question marks over their suitability for the challenge ahead.

And that’s before we even consider just how little impact on their title challenge last summer’s defeats to Villarreal and Tottenham had.

Arsenal fans are entitled to feel a tad deflated at the likely demise of the Vini pursuit. It would have been one of the greatest Premier League coups ever, and there is now a slight nagging sense that they might have been played, pawns in a game that always ended with a bumper new Real Madrid contract.

But look around the rest of the nominal contenders to Arsenal’s crown this season. Imagine the biggest issue for any of them being ‘didn’t quite pull off the biggest Premier League transfer of all time’.

The clear and simple fact is that any of them would swap positions with Arsenal right now. They were clearly the best team last season, and are now the only known quantity in a post-Klopp, post-Pep era. Some of their rivals will be better for the change, others will be worse.

But all are playing significant catch-up, and, while retaining Premier League titles has long been a horribly difficult task, Arsenal look tremendously well placed, both in terms of their own development and the doubts that exist everywhere else you look.

Arsenal had the distinct misfortune to become a very good team at the same time Guardiola was almost unstoppable.

How the turntables have… turned. Arsenal now enjoy the potentially trophy-hoarding good fortune to have become the Premier League’s pre-eminent team for the first time in over 20 years at a time when the rest of the big beasts have never looked less certain or less convincing.

And yet, there is something eating at them currently. We’re certain they’re wrong, and it’s nothing five straight wins at the start of the season won’t fix. But there’s no denying the mood at Arsenal right now doesn’t quite seem to match the reality.

2) Coventry City

Is Frank Lampard now a decent Premier League manager? Nobody on either side of that debate actually knows the answer. We’ll all find out soon enough and the answer will also tell us what kind of season Coventry might have on a scale of Derby to Sunderland.

For now, the giddiness of being back in the top flight after such a long and challenging time away understandably holds sway over any concerns about what comes next.

1) Leeds United

It is not Leeds’ fault or problem that almost everywhere else you look around the league there is chaos and upheaval and doubt and uncertainty. All Leeds have to do is capitalise on that, and there is a definite and growing sense they expect to do just that.

We’ve said elsewhere that the bar for looking like a ‘settled’ Premier League club has never been lower than it is right now, but Leeds clear that bar.

They finished well clear of relegation in the end last season, and have the same manager now as they did at the start of last season. And they have a squad that has undergone quietly impressive evolution rather than revolution this summer.

And that is now absolutely more than enough to make you look like a sensible grown-up football club who are here to stay.

There is more talk around Elland Road at this point about possible pushes for Europe than battles against relegation.

It could absolutely all turn out to be the most appalling act of hubris, because this league can punish you hard if you get ahead of yourself or allow any kind of relaxed complacency to set in.

But with what looks like a weak crop of promoted teams it does seem unlikely that there will be any kind of repeat of last season’s relegation battle where the dear old 40-point barrier actually made a long-awaited and unexpected return to significance.

And that does mean a chance for teams like Leeds to dare to dream. It’s easy to think that Leeds’ apparent self-assurance after just one season back in the Premier League is a bit presumptuous, a bit bolshy. Arrogant, even.

But from the outside looking in it’s also hard to argue that it’s anything other than fair enough. They do seem very unlikely to be worryingly bad and with every chance of being pretty, pretty, pretty good.