Chelsea

Chelsea go into the season as reigning FIFA Club World Cup holders, adding the 2025 trophy to the Europa Conference League they lifted the same year, and the pressure at Stamford Bridge now sits on turning that run of silverware into a genuine title challenge in the Premier League.

The club took its name almost by accident. When a group of businessmen went looking for a tenant for a new stadium in 1905, Fulham already held the local claim to that name, so the new side became Chelsea instead, formed in a pub on Fulham Road, the Rising Sun, now known as the Butcher's Hook. It joined the Football League the same year, professional from its first match rather than growing up through the amateur ranks.

Stamford Bridge has stayed the one constant, a 40,044-capacity ground that has outlasted every ownership change, including Roman Abramovich's 2003 takeover of what had briefly been a publicly listed company.

Frank Lampard remains the club's all-time leading scorer with 211 goals, a midfielder who came through the academy and later captained the side, while Didier Drogba holds the Premier League scoring record for the club and settled the 2012 Champions League final himself, the night Chelsea won the competition for the first time. That European breakthrough came under John Terry's captaincy, another academy graduate, and was followed nine years later by a second Champions League title. Between them sit two Europa League wins and eight FA Cups, a competition Chelsea have made something of a habit of winning.

The West London derby against Fulham and the wider rivalry with Arsenal and Tottenham give the fixture list its sharpest edges, the kind of games where reputations get made and unmade in a single afternoon. For now, the focus is on the pitch: a Premier League campaign where Chelsea are expected to compete at the top, not just collect cups from the sidelines.