Premier League Preview: Chelsea

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·9 Agustus 2025

Premier League Preview: Chelsea

Last year’s finish: 4th
First match: Sunday, August 17 9:00am ET vs Crystal Palace
Where they’ll be five games in: 13 pts. with 4W, 1D, 0L

That’s World Champions Chelsea to you, buddy.

Transfer News

In true Blue fashion, Chelsea’s approach to recruitment and transferring is simple: spend and sell until it fits. Despite dropping $1.6B (yes, BILLION) between 2022 and 2025 they just haven’t been able to find that special chemistry. That eyewatering total makes this summer’s $71M spend look a paltry sum, though the club has actually been careful to sell off players to keep the PSR apparachniks quiet. The very real truth is that Chelsea are running out of financial slight-of-hand trickery and quite simply have to balance books the old fashioned way. They’ve already been dinged by UEFA for $36M for violating financial regulations.

Video OneFootball

So far, Chelsea have sold, loaned or released 25 players. They added eight and got Raheem Sterling and Armando Broja back from loan. This puts the current squad number at 37.

Season Outlook

Acknowledging that Chelsea wasn’t always fun to watch at the Club World Cup ignores the fact that they were ruthless enough to grind out four single-elimination wins plus three group stage matches in under a month. Champions League plus the Prem will be easy street! This team has ridiculous depth in all positions, and there’s very little excuse if they’re not competitive in any fixture they play. They may not win, but at no point should should they roll over or expose their belly.

While the Club World Cup trophy and generous payout were nice, it did require that Chelsea curtail it’s pre-season. Whether this will help or hinder them in the opening fixtures of the league will have to be seen, but their first five games are not against any significant opposition (only one finished above 10th last season).

Key Players

This is an absurd exercise. I’m just going to put a list together of all the ones I’m excited about.

Nicholas Jackson Truth: I’m excited to see him leave. Stop asking teams to pony up over $100M for this turkey. Take what you can get and good riddance!
João Pedro If he’s half as good in the first few league games as he was in the CWC, we got ourselves a veritable bargain.
Estêvão I still say he’s too small for the PL, but maybe I’ll be proved wrong?
Josh Acheampong He’s been a Blue since he was seven. Now 19, the 6’3” defender was outstanding in the CWC and should see more minutes this year, despite Chelsea’s incredible stable of defenders.
Robert Sánchez His CWC final heroics aside, I still believe this is the weakest area on the roster. Filip Jørgensen is a barely acceptable back-up.