a reason to be cheerful for every Premier League club

Let’s come up with a reason to be cheerful for every single one of the Premier League clubs, we thought. Because if you can’t be cheerful and optimistic in pre-season, then when can you be cheerful and optimistic? Absolutely never in some cases, to be honest, based on how hard some of these were.

Arsenal
Last season really was one of great progress after successive eighth-place finishes and it could easily have ended with Champions League football. A young squad should improve on last season and has been further freshened up by eye-catching signings. Every reason to think they will be better again, even if gains on the league table are likely to be harder to come by this year. They’ve also got another absolutely lovely retro-inspired home kit and an even better away one.

Aston Villa
Lots of solid-looking transfer business – ins and outs – boxed off nice and early with the prospect of more to come. Nice blend of youth and experience to the newbies and clear sense that this squad will be stronger than last year’s post-Grealish mishmash. Don’t have Newcastle money to spend, but do have wealthy owners who seem more than willing to invest and appear better placed than most of the mid-table morass to make serious strides next season.

Brentford
They’re a Premier League club, which is still pretty f***ing exciting for a club who hadn’t been in the top flight for 70-odd years until last season. Have a very good manager and look set to keep the core of the side that stayed up with minimal fuss last season intact.

Bournemouth
Are currently top of the league on tables that have fallen for the old Acme-style “AFC” scam the Cherries have been pulling since 1971, at least until Arsenal change their name to Aarsenal in response. Of course, The Arsenal should really be 17th if we’re playing this game.

Brighton
Nobody has pilfered Graham Potter yet and it doesn’t look like anybody is going to either. Ergo, another season of comfy mid-table loveliness peppered with occasional bloodying of Big Six noses awaits.

Chelsea
Still exist, which was not a certainty a few months ago. And not only that, still spending large sums of someone else’s money on shiny new players to make sure they finish third again next season. Thus far, also seem to be spending that money suspiciously sensibly on good players to improve the squad instead of doing the sort of madnesses that you would associate with a bolshy new American owner who almost immediately…