Five Premier League sides who have smashed pre-season - including Chelsea & Newcastle triumphs

More than 30 years of Premier League football should really have taught us at least one collective lesson – pre-season form doesn’t matter. Many clubs have sailed through a string of friendlies only to fall flat on their face as soon as the real thing starts, and varied are the teams that have looked like a hot mess prior to opening day only before winning every game in sight come August. Still, it’s fun to speculate, isn’t it?

And this year’s summer silly season has actually been pretty intriguing. Teams that came into the off-season on the brink of apparent disaster have impressed, and several theoretically sound sides have been decidedly iffy as they traipse around America for the amusement of the overseas audience.

But let’s keep it positive and stick to surveying the sides that have had good pre-seasons, and spend a bit of time contemplating what the positive signs might mean before all the information we gather is immediately proved to be irrelevant as soon as we start with the meaningful football.

Chelsea

Whisper it quietly, but after one of the most abject seasons imaginable, Chelsea have actually looked pretty handy this summer, and Mauricio Pochettino really does seem to have got the good vibrations flowing gently back in the direction of Stamford Bridge.

New signings Nicolas Jackson and Christopher Nkunku – the latter of whom injured his knee on a dire pitch last week and may miss the very start of the season – have looked sharp and dangerous, and have been getting goals against decent teams. The midfield might be a bit makeshift, but it doesn’t seem to be struggling too badly. Even Mykhailo Mudryk scored.

Chelsea haven’t lost a single game, beating Wrexham, Brighton & Hove Albion and Fulham and drawing against Newcastle United and Borussia Dortmund. It’s a small sample size to draw from and not necessarily spectacular, but given how diabolical the Pensioners were last season, even a mildly positive pre-season represents a vast volte-face from where they were.

Tottenham Hotspur

A summer dominated by the tediously drawn-out Harry Kane saga might not be considered ideal preparation for life under a new manager, but while we seem no closer to a resolution on the future of their best player, Spurs have quietly cracked on with the job of being really quite good.

A defeat to West Ham United in mid-July wasn’t the ideal start, but since then they’ve stacked up two consecutive 5-1 wins (granted that one of them was against Singapore side Lion City Sailors) and in total they’ve managed a frankly showy 101 shots in those three games. Ange Postecoglou likes to play attacking football and it seems to be working splendidly, even if the early results suggest that clean sheets might be something of a rarity.

The flip side of that coin, of course, is that five of their twelve goals were scored a certain Mr. H Kane, although he likely stand-in, Richarlison, did net a hat-trick against the Sailors at least. There have also been encouraging performances from new boys James Maddison and Destiny Udogie to keep optimism levels high. Three games isn’t much of a sample size, of course – and they do face Barcelona on Tuesday night in a bizarrely late final pre-season test. Watch them take a thrashing, now.

Everton

The Toffees barely made it out of last season with their Premier League status intact, looked utterly inept in front of goal and didn’t make a much better impression defensively – and then they’ve spent most of the summer desperately trying to buy a string of young strikers, only one of whom, Youssef Chermiti, looks likely to actually join. It isn’t the stuff that high hopes are made of.

But the results are. Six games, four wins, two draws, zero defeats, and most encouragingly of all only three goals conceded (two in Italy to Monza and one away to Swiss side Stade Nyonnais). Goals haven’t exactly flowed – only the six of them – but you know, baby steps. Besides, Sporting Lisbon have been crushed beneath Sean Dyche’s hobnailed boots (or at least beaten 1-0) and it was Dominic Calvert-Lewin who scored against the Portuguese side. If he’s fit and even halfway to firing, Everton might not look so impotent after all. They’ll certainly be better dressed.

Wolverhampton Wanderers

Honestly, the boys from the Black Country provide us with a pretty similar story – a struggling team from last season with major issues in attack going unbeaten and barely conceding a goal in the process. Wolves shipped just three goals in their seven friendlies, scoring nine and beating Rennes and Porto in the process, as well as drawing with Celtic.

The summer hasn’t been entirely sunny, of course, either at Molineux or in the strict meteorological sense. Issues with FFP forced the sale of talismanic midfielder Rúben Neves and there have been persistent stories that head coach Julen Lopetegui could be leaving. The squad looks thin and reinforcements have not been overwhelming. But everything still looks pretty promising on the pitch, and if Lopetegui stays and continues to get a tune out of his charges, you’d think that they’ll be OK.

Newcastle United

It’s been a strange sort of summer up on Tyneside, with early transfer rumours linking the Saudi-owned side with a string of lavish new signings – up to and including Neymar. The eventual arrivals of Harvey Barnes, Tino Livramento and Sandro Tonali instead suggest a slightly more gradual shift towards becoming a regular top four side, even if they’re hardly cheap and cheerful.

And everything seems to be gelling well enough on the pitch, at least. They’re another entirely unbeaten side, with Rangers, Brighton, Fiorentina and Villarreal all beaten and Chelsea and Aston Villa the only sides able to scrape a draw. It all feels a bit rosier than it did when they found themselves 2-0 down to local non-league side Gateshead at the halfway point of their first friendly of the summer back in July, and the goal-happy contributions of young Elliot Anderson have been another bright spot – the 20-year-old midfielder scored four and set up a further three across the games. Not bad.

Will the Magpies make top four again? On this evidence, it’s looking like a pretty good bet – but the caveat is that a couple of last season’s underperformers are in rather better nick this season. Or perhaps they aren’t. Perhaps everything we’ve learned from pre-season is as meaningful as the time Erling Haaland missed a sitter in the Community Shield a year ago and loads of people thought he might be rubbish. At least we won’t have to wait long to find out.