PREVIEW: Are Chelsea Premier League title contenders? | OneFootball

Champions of the world. It’s a title Chelsea had previously held once before, but now they’ve got it for four years; now they’ve got it after defeating Paris Saint-Germain, the best team in Europe, in the final of the Club World Cup.

That’s what’s curious about Chelsea. Due to the wonderful quirks of football trophies, they can boast their status as world champions, but they’re not English champions nor European champions. They’ve won what FIFA would like us to view as the most prestigious honour in club football, but they’re hardly favourites to win the Premier League.

Yet, this is a team of whom the only real question is consistency. Under Enzo Maresca, they’ve already won the UEFA Conference League against Real Betis at a canter, as well as the Club World Cup.

They’re good. They’re very good. Can they do it for 38 gruelling games, though? That’s what remains to be seen, with last year’s fourth place finish coming at the end of what was really a season of three thirds as far as results were concerned.

Alas, a genuine fight for the Premier League is the logical next step for a club which seems to only be going up. And, if history has taught us anything, Chelsea are most dangerous when they’re not being included in the conversation. This is a team who can’t be ignored.

A mammoth transfer window. Again.

If you’ve been keeping up with Todd Boehly and Clearlake Capital’s time involved with Chelsea, you’ll know that they’ve done one thing more than virtually anybody else: transfers. This summer has been no different.

Nine transfers over the course of one summer would be enough for a lot of top clubs, but those are just Chelsea’s incomings (including Kendry Paéz, who has since departed on loan to sister club Strasbourg). They’ve also got rid of 15 players on permanent and loan deals, so this is going to be a squad which might look a little different to how you’ll remember it from last year.

João Pedro has been perhaps the most notable addition so far. The Brazilian arrived from Brighton in the middle of Chelsea’s Club World Cup campaign for a price of €63.7 million before scoring the brace against Fluminense that sent The Blues to the final. Once in the showpiece, he scored the third goal of the game to put the final nail in PSG’s coffin and secure Chelsea’s €97.8 million in prize money. For a games-to-revenue signing, his new employers surely couldn’t believe their luck.

He wasn’t the only new boy to feature in the Club World Cup, though, with Liam Delap also finding the net in that competition after joining for €35.5 from Ipswich Town. Palmeiras’ 18-year-old wonderkid Estêvão also impressed at the tournament, and after moving to Stamford Bridge for €34 million, this season will be his first taste of English football.

Then there’s Jamie Gittens, the Manchester City academy graduate, who has joined from Borussia Dortmund and will likely compete with Estêvão for a spot on the wing, and Jorrel Hato, who has joined from Ajax and can play at either left back or centre half.

They’ve been busy. One question you can’t ask of Chelsea is if they have enough depth. In fact, you might remember that last season, they had one set of players who played in the Premier League and another almost exclusively used in the UEFA Conference League. With Champions League football to play this time round, they can’t do that again, so they’ve made sales. Lots of them.

Noni Madueke’s move was perhaps most surprising, as he left Chelsea’s squad before they’d even won the Club World Cup to finalise a move to Arsenal. João Félix, a student of the Álvaro Morata school of making a transfer in almost every window, has joined compatriot Cristiano Ronaldo at Al Nassr. Lesley Ugochukwu is one of three players trading Stamford Bridge for Turf Moor, with Bashir Humphreys and Armando Broja joining him at Burnley. Đorđe Petrović has moved to Bournemouth to replace Kepa Arrizabalaga between the sticks, whom Chelsea have also sold to Arsenal. Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall has signed for Everton, Mathis Amougou has moved to Strasbourg and, finally, Marcus Betinelli is the man to fill Scott Carson’s gloves at Manchester City.

And breathe. All in all, thanks to all of those sales, Chelsea’s net spend is a cool €47.7 million. For a window which has seen nine players come in, that is good going. They could make even more money, too, with Jadon Sancho now linked with Roma.

Chelsea have done what all good teams do: they’ve got better.

Maresca-ball is in full flow

At the time, it felt a strange decision when Chelsea parted ways with Mauricio Pochettino after only one season in favour of Maresca, who’d just won the Championship with Leicester City. It doesn’t now.

By the start of the 2024/25 season, Chelsea had been floating through varying systems from various managers since Antonio Conte’s successful stint starting in 2016. They won plenty of trophies along the way, from the Premier League in 2017, to the FA Cup in 2018, to the Champions League in 2021, but at the expense of a consistent style of play.

This was made particularly evident when Maresca, a ball-playing, tactically dogmatic disciple of Pep Guardiola, took over from Pochettino, whose training sessions were – according to Moisés Caicedo – more about running than developing a tactical approach.

It was little surprise that Chelsea’s adaptation to Maresca’s approach wasn’t entirely seamless, particularly with regards to Cole Palmer, whose free role within Pochettino’s system became more rigid under his successor. Alas, 24 goals and assists in the Premier League wasn’t exactly a bad return.

The Blues secured Champions League football anyway before really kicking on at the backend of the season. A 4-1 win over a Real Betis side who tired significantly in the final of the Europa Conference League was one thing: totally dismantling the seemingly unbeatable PSG in the final of the Club World Cup was something else altogether.

What was so significant about that result was that, for the first time in 2025, Luis Enrique had been outcoached, and Maresca was the man to do it. A suffocating press gave PSG no room to breathe, and the exploitation of an incredibly high line saw Chelsea create chances at will. Then there was Palmer, looking as free as he did under Pochettino, toying with some of the best defenders in the world to score a brace.

Every single Chelsea player knew what to do: every single one of them did it perfectly. All of a sudden, Maresca looked more pragmatic than dogmatic. If he could find a system with which to comfortably beat Paris Saint-Germain, he can find one to beat any team. That should be a scary prospect for the Premier League.

Player to watch: Cole Palmer

It’s hardly an original thought, but Palmer is a truly special footballer. As mentioned, though, he didn’t always have things his own way under Maresca last year.

He finished the season with 15 goals and nine assists in the Premier League, but he did go over two months between February and April without finding the back of the net once. He also failed to score a single goal in the UEFA Conference League knockout stages, when he was introduced into the squad.

However, his upturn in the Club World Cup final showed just how valuable he can be. If that version of Palmer is who shows up to every Premier League game, he could be the difference between this being a good Chelsea team and a title-contending one.

That said, Caicedo, Enzo Fernández and Marc Cucurella in particular have all found the best form of their Chelsea careers under the tutelage of Maresca and can all have huge impacts on this upcoming season. But none of them are Cole Palmer.

Signing to watch: João Pedro

After securing an impressive 16 goal contributions in the Premier League for Brighton last season, it was hardly a surprise that João Pedro made a move to a bigger club in the summer. However, it did raise some eyebrows that a player who wasn’t quite an out-and-out number nine made the move to Chelsea. When he joined, it looked as though he was a similar profile to Christopher Nkunku or João Félix: not quite a striker, not quite an attacking midfielder, not quite a winger.

The Club World Cup showed exactly what he is, and will be, for his new club though: a striker. A goal-scorer. Three goals in three games, including one in the final, was certainly one way to adhere himself to his new fans, and his signing has left the future of Nicolas Jackson – a more than capable forward in his own right – in doubt.

It must be said that the Brazilian has never scored more than 10 goals in a Premier League season, but with a better supporting cast around him, there’s every chance that can change this year, and if it does, it could be the final piece of the puzzle.

Chelsea: title contenders?

It might not be the most academic conclusion, but to answer the question of whether Chelsea can genuinely compete for the Premier League title: why not?

The big question mark is whether they can play as well as they did in the Club World Cup final week in, week out. Last season, they started well with only two losses in their opening 17 matches, before five losses from their next nine and a finish return to only two losses in their final 12. They need to find the answer to that problem this time round, but with the squad visibly having got to grips more with Maresca’s way of playing, they have every reason to be confident that they can play at a high standard for longer this season.

Of course, Liverpool have gone from strong to even stronger with their transfer window, Arsenal have finally signed the striker for whom they’ve been desperate for some time now in Viktor Gyökeres, and Manchester City have put themselves in a better position than last campaign.

But you’d be naïve to write off Chelsea. In 2005, under José Mourinho, they won the Premier League when all the talk was of Arsene Wenger’s Arsenal and Alex Ferguson’s Manchester United. In 2012, under Roberto Di Matteo, they won the Champions League when all the talk was of Bayern taking the trophy in their own backyard. In 2017, under Conte, they won the Premier League when all the talk was of Guardiola’s City and Mourinho’s United. In 2021, under Thomas Tuchel, they won the Champions League when all the talk was of Manchester City finally ending their European drought.

You get the idea? Chelsea have made a recent history of being most dangerous when the talk is not about them. This time round, all the talk is of Liverpool and Arsenal while Chelsea are already world champions.

They’re contenders, alright.