RESOLVING THE LEDGER
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The Premier League is back and it’s been quite a dramatic first weekend already, with plenty of surprises and late goals and home victories (seven of the eight games played so far) to get the new season, the 35th in the competition’s history, started right. It’s like we never left!
Of course, we are hoping that for us, it will be quite the opposite of that. We’ve very much left last season behind, at least off the pitch, so now we’re hoping to do the same on the pitch as well. New manager, new players, new approach. Preseason vibes have been good, everyone’s saying all the right things, and there’s hope among the nation.
“We feel ready. We’ve prepared the whole pre-season these six weeks with some coming, some players from the first day, or the ones coming later. But the desire, the ambition, the hunger to start the Premier League is already in the building in each training and we’re looking forward to it.”
-Xabi Alonso; source: Football.London
Let’s get it started.
Date / Time: Monday, August 24, 2026, 20.00 BST; 3pm EDT; 12:30am IST (next day) Venue: Craven Cottage, SW6 Referee: John Brooks (on pitch); Darren England (VAR) Forecast: Nice and warm
On TV: Sky Sports Main Event (UK); USA, Universo (USA); Star Sports Select HD1 (India); SuperSport Premier League Streaming: Sky Go (UK); Telemundo Deportes En Vivo (USA); JioHotstar (India); DStv Now (NGA)
Fulham team news: Marco Silva, the third longest serving manager in the Premier League, left Fulham after five seasons in the summer, having brought them up from the Championship four years ago and kept them safely in the top division ever since. They’ve finished 10th, 13th, 11th, and 11th in that time: a fixture of the midtable. (And just one behind us last season.) Silva was briefly linked with the Chelsea job, even, but he would end up Benfica instead, back in his hometown after a decade spent in English football.
The new man in charge is Álvaro Arbeloa, who, in an ironic coincidence, in his very first game, will come up against the manager he replaced halfway through last season at Real Madrid. Arbeloa was a youth coach at Real when he was promoted to the first-team following the mid-January departure of Xabi Alonso, losing more games in fewer games played the rest of the way. This will be his first full season in charge in senior professional football. (Alonso and Arbeloa were of course teammates as well, at both Liverpool and Madrid, as well as the Spain national team; both have made it a point of emphasis they will be the very opposite of good friends for the 90 minutes of this game.)
Fulham’s squad is largely unchanged from last season, with the additions of a couple former Real Madrid youth products (striker Gonzalo García and midfielder César Palacios) and a former Manchester City prospect in defensive midfielder Shea Charles, who’s done well in the Championship the last few seasons with Southampton and Sheffield Wednesday. Isso Diop, Saša Lukić, Harry Wilson, and Raúl Jiménez have gone. Wilson and Raúl were technically their top goalscorers last year, but with just eleven and ten goals to their names, respectively. Hardly irreplaceable.
Club legend and captain Tom Cairney is still out after offseason knee surgery (won’t be back until after the first international break) while center back Joachim Andersen is suspended due to a red card he received on the final day of last season.
Chelsea team news: Speaking of suspensions carrying over, we’ve got one of those as well, with Wesley Fofana. Everyone else not actively involved in transfers should be available, though Danny Welbeck is questionable while both Jordan Henderson and Emmanuel Emegha are fitness doubts.
Those three are among the many new arrivals at the Bridge, with Chelsea characteristically very busy once again this summer. Over £300m was spent to acquire the likes of Morgan Rogers (for a new club-record, even), Maxence Lacroix, Marco Palestra, Pep Chavarría, Geovany Quenda, and Valentín Barco. About half that amount has been collected in corresponding sales — Marc Cucurella, Trevoh Chalobah, Andrey Santos, and Tyrique George — and we may not be completely done yet in that regard, with questions remaining over the futures of Enzo Fernández and, to lesser extent, Pedro Neto and Malo Gusto.
For once, all that chop and change seems to have resulted in a more balanced squad — in terms of quality, personality, maturity, different stages of the career, as Alonso put it — so hopefully that will in turn lead to more consistent results, more mature performances, and a more robust (winning) mentality throughout the squad. BlueCo promised a “period of reflection” following the disastrous decisions of last year, not to mention the last four years of zero progress, and we’ve actually gotten a bit of a paradigm shift out of all that with regards to their approach. Perhaps we are now indeed on the right track.
Previously: Chelsea hold a significant edge in this friendly West London Derby rivalry ( won 53 of the 92 meetings, losing just 12), but we’ve only won four of the last eight played since they last returned to the Premier League. We split the series last season, both teams winning their home games. Our 2-0 win at the Bridge that August was largely remembered for a disallowed goal from teenager Josh King, which became a media narrative for far too long.
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