The Premier League is again and it’s been fairly a dramatic first weekend already, with loads of surprises and late targets and residential victories (seven of the eight video games performed up to now) to get the brand new season, the thirty fifth within the competitors’s historical past, began proper. It’s like we by no means left!
In fact, we hope that for us, it is going to be fairly the other of that. We’ve very a lot left final season behind, no less than off the pitch, so now we’re hoping to do the identical on the pitch as nicely. New supervisor, new gamers, new strategy. Preseason vibes have been good, everybody’s saying all the precise issues, and there’s hope among the many nation.
“We really feel prepared. We’ve ready the entire pre-season these six weeks with some coming, some gamers from the primary day, or those coming later. However the want, the ambition, the starvation to start out the Premier League is already within the constructing in every coaching and we’re wanting ahead to it.”
-Xabi Alonso; supply: Football.London
Date / Time: Monday, August 24, 2026, 20.00 BST; 3pm EDT; 12:30am IST (subsequent day)
Venue: Craven Cottage, SW6
Referee: John Brooks (on pitch); Darren England (VAR)
Forecast: Good and heat
On TV: Sky Sports activities Predominant Occasion (UK); USA, Universo (USA); Star Sports activities Choose HD1 (India); SuperSport Premier League
Streaming: Sky Go (UK); Telemundo Deportes En Vivo (USA); JioHotstar (India); DStv Now (NGA)
Fulham crew information: Marco Silva, the third longest serving supervisor within the Premier League, left Fulham after 5 seasons in the summertime, having introduced them up from the Championship 4 years in the past and stored them safely within the prime division ever since. They’ve completed tenth, thirteenth, eleventh, and eleventh in that point: a fixture of the midtable. (And only one behind us final season.) Silva was briefly linked with the Chelsea job, even, however he would find yourself Benfica as an alternative, again in his hometown after a decade spent in English soccer.
The brand new man in cost is Álvaro Arbeloa, who, in an ironic coincidence, in his very first sport, will come up towards the supervisor he changed midway by final season at Actual Madrid. Arbeloa was a youth coach at Actual when he was promoted to the first-team following the mid-January departure of Alonso, dropping extra video games in fewer games-played the remainder of the way in which. This shall be his first full season in cost in senior skilled soccer. (Alonso and Arbeloa had been in fact teammates as nicely, at each Liverpool and Madrid, in addition to the Spain nationwide crew; each have made it a degree of emphasis they would be the very reverse of excellent buddies for the 90 minutes of this sport.)
Fulham’s squad is basically unchanged from final season, with the additions of a pair former Actual Madrid youth merchandise (striker Gonzalo García and midfielder César Palacios) and a former Manchester Metropolis prospect in defensive midfielder Shea Charles, who had completed nicely within the Championship the previous few seasons with Southampton and Sheffield Wednesday. Issa Diop, Saša Lukić, Harry Wilson, and Raúl Jiménez have gone. Wilson and Raúl had been technically their prime goalscorers final 12 months, however with simply eleven and ten targets to their names, respectively. Hardly irreplaceable.
Membership legend and captain Tom Cairney remains to be out after offseason knee surgical procedure (gained’t be again till after the primary worldwide break) whereas middle again Joachim Andersen is suspended attributable to a purple card he acquired on the ultimate day of final season.
Chelsea crew information: Talking of suspensions carrying over, we’ve received a kind of as nicely, with Wesley Fofana. Everybody else not actively concerned in transfers must be accessible, although Danny Welbeck is questionable whereas each Jordan Henderson and Emmanuel Emegha are health doubts.
These three are among the many many new arrivals on the Bridge, with Chelsea characteristically very busy as soon as once more this summer time. Over £300m was spent to accumulate the likes of Morgan Rogers (for a brand new club-record, even), Maxence Lacroix, Marco Palestra, Pep Chavarría, Geovany Quenda, and Valentín Barco. About half that quantity has been collected in corresponding gross sales — Marc Cucurella, Trevoh Chalobah, Andrey Santos, and Tyrique George — and we might not be fully completed but in that regard, with questions remaining over the futures of Enzo Fernández and, to lesser extent, Pedro Neto and Malo Gusto.
For as soon as, all that chop and alter appears to have resulted in a extra balanced squad — by way of high quality, persona, maturity, completely different levels of the profession, as Alonso put it — so hopefully that can in flip result in extra constant outcomes, extra mature performances, and a extra sturdy (profitable) mentality all through the squad. BlueCo promised a “interval of reflection” following the disastrous selections of final 12 months, to not point out the final 4 years of zero progress, and we’ve really gotten a little bit of a paradigm shift out of all that almost about their strategy. Maybe we are actually certainly heading in the right direction.
Beforehand: Chelsea maintain a major edge on this pleasant West London Derby rivalry (won 53 of the 92 conferences, dropping simply 12), however we’ve solely gained 4 of the final eight performed since Fulham final got here up into the Premier League. We cut up the collection final season, each groups profitable their residence video games. Our 2-0 win on the Bridge that August was largely remembered for a disallowed purpose from teenager Josh King, which turned a media narrative for much too lengthy.
