My (late) preview of the season - I'm interested to see where people disagree with this!
At the top of the table it's hard to look past Man City, they're probably stronger than last season.
Arsenal are likely to follow them, although their strength in depth is a concern which is what ultimately cost them last season.
Liverpool should be the other good team. I'd have them better than Arsenal, but they have let go some senior players that played a lot of minutes for them last year and I'm not sure about the replacements.
The 4th Champions League place will be an interesting race, although Man Utd should squeak it. They're likely to be in a fight with Newcastle and Tottenham. I think Newcastle might be a bit distracted by the Champions League this year. Tottenham look good even without Kane.
Aston Villa did extremely well once binning Gerrard last year, and look stronger again. They're going to have an issue in a year or two with a team full of peak age players, but that's not this season's problem. They could even be up in the fight for 4th.
Bookies favour Chelsea to be up there, but while I think Pochettino should be able to do something with some of the thousand players they have, who really knows what. Losing Nkunku in the close season was a blow.
Brighton will be up in the top half but I think the loss of some key players will be hard on them, especially while also playing in Europe.
Palace finished strongly last season, and despite the loss of talisman Zaha will likely be solid this season, but not strong enough to pick apart the top teams.
Brentford were good last season, and have strengthened, so I like them. I think West Ham will do better in the league than last season, but may still be distracted by Europe again so not finish as high as they could.
Bournemouth look like they've taken last season's near miss to heart and have strengthened, although losing their player of the season Lerma will be a problem for them.
Everton are bad, but Dyche will make them effective enough with lump and squish tactics to stay out of a terrible bottom group. Fulham are the same - although they did well last season, virtually every roll of the dice went their way and now Mitrovic has buggered off, so I don't see it happening again.
Out of the relegation contenders Forest should stay up again because there are teams worse than them and they've strengthened, but some bad luck (and good luck for others) might change that.
Burnley seem the most likely of the three promoted teams to stay up. They seem to be doing good things, sustainably.
Wolves have huge ownership issues and have sold a bunch of big players as well as losing their manager. They're my unfortunate team to go down in lieu of Burnley.
Which leaves Sheffield Utd and Luton at the bottom, both of which look so far away from this league. Of course you never really know but I think they'll need to be busy before the end of the month to build something with a chance of staying up.
Winners: Man City
2: Arsenal
3: Liverpool
4: Man Utd
5: Tottenham
6: Newcastle
7: Aston Villa
8: Chelsea
9: Brighton
10: Crystal Palace
11: Brentford
12: West Ham
13: Bournemouth
14: Everton
15: Fulham
16: Nottingham Forest
17: Burnley
18: Wolves
19: Sheffield Utd
20: Luton
