Premier League Previews: Arsenal, Bournemouth, Burnley & Chelsea

This article originally appeared on VICE Sports UK.

This weekend the new football season truly kicks into gear with the return of the Premier League. Euro 2016 may not yet be cold in its grave, but the most moneyed top flight on the planet cares not for such sentimentality. So it's time to forget about England's players failing overseas and start thinking about overseas players succeeding in England. In our first preview we're looking at the season that lies ahead for Arsenal, Bournemouth, Burnley and Chelsea.

With this season looking like it might be the end for Arsene Wenger, fans were hoping that he'd have a final blowout. He's into the final year of his contract and, after years of scrimping and saving in the aftermath of the move to The Emirates, he should be throwing readies about like an absolute loon. We all want to see the Frenchman burning through Arsenal's vast cash reserves, hijacking the Paul Pogba transfer with a £200m offer, plus Theo Walcott. We all want to live in a world where Wenger lets his hair down and starts throwing about grotesque amounts of money, a world where he completely loses it and starts some sort of massive cash bonfire in the middle of Islington, just to watch the world burn.

That would be the ultimate catharsis for Arsenal fans but, unfortunately, it doesn't look likely to happen. Having signed Granit Xhaka earlier in the summer, the club's transfer business has ground to a sickening halt. With the squad perpetually one or two players short of winning the title, this season doesn't look like it will be much different to the last one. Wenger will leave the club with an overflowing bank account, and a team that still needs Walcott to score 15 goals a season. Invariably, he does not.

Once dismissed as a quiet seaside town populated mainly by OAPs, Bournemouth can now be dismissed as a quiet seaside town populated mainly by OAPs that also has a functional Premier League side. Eddie Howe's boys were excellent in their first top-flight campaign and could well have finished higher than 16th, had they not embarked on a collective mind-holiday to Ibiza after securing safety.

Ahead of season two they have added some excellent young talent, particularly £15 million man Jordon Ibe and England youth star Lewis Cook. The latter was very highly rated at Leeds United, comes at a bargain £3m, and is seen by many as a future England international.

If that's the case, he's probably hooking up with the right boss in Howe. The 38-year-old gaffer has the calm, polished maturity of a future star, most likely after Sam Allardyce's England exit Euro 2020 to fucking Malta.

Of course, Bournemouth will lack the element of surprise; they probably won't be written off as an easy win in the manner some rivals were guilty of last term. A trip to whatever god-awful sponsor name Dean Court has this season will be treated with due respect.

Still, they should have more than enough to survive. Indeed, having impressed last term, added well to the squad, and with Howe at the helm, Bournemouth should be a solid proposition this year. And hell, if they're not there's always Boscombe Pier – voted Pier of the Year in 2010.

While they might not have the funds to outspend their relegation rivals, Burnley have the advantage of being rock fookin' 'ard. Having bruised their way to the Championship title last season, the team seems grittier than ever. Sean Dyche is possibly the blokiest manager of all time, a man who looks like he could disassemble a motor engine in five minutes, blindfolded. He seems like the sort of bloke who spends six hours polishing his car bonnet every Saturday, before spending the rest of his day silently putting up the shelves he made with his vintage lathe.

Sean Dyche is a man who has clearly never, ever talked about his emotions. We imagine he's very sensitive in private, and that he spends his spare time reading Vera Brittain and crying quietly at the futility of war. When it comes to Burnley, however, he's an immovable slab of monosyllabic manliness. He's going to turn Turf Moor into a fortress this season, and build a team out of hard graft, determination and sheer resolve.

Are Burnley better equipped to stay up this term than they were in 2014/15? It's hard to say. The team isn't much changed in key positions, but the experience gained in the meantime could prove invaluable. Dyche can only set the side up to be competitive, and after that it's up to the players to see his gameplan out. Survival is the only aim this season. Manage that, and Dyche can go back to polishing his bonnet in peace.

Roman Abramovich probably still harbours vague hopes of waking up to find Bobby Ewing naked in his shower telling him that the events of the past 12 months were a bizarre dream. Chelsea's horrible form last year cost Jose Mourinho his job and sent the Portuguese into the cold, soulless clutches of Manchester United, where the only difference he's likely to notice is the colour of the kits.

But Chelsea seem to have found a more than able successor in Antonio Conte. Many were unsure of him pre-Euro 2016 – after all, he'd only won three successive Serie A titles at Juventus – but the Azzurri's showing in France this summer erased any lingering doubts. This was the weakest Italy side in decades but Conte marshalled them perfectly, reaching the quarter-finals and demolishing holders Spain in the process. With his mad starring eyes and frequent threats to kill his own players, he's a man who means business.

This being Abramovich's Chelsea, there are of course transfers to discuss. N'Golo Kante is a fine addition – in switching from Leicester to Chelsea he has performed a move that we're dubbing the 'reverse Dennis Wise', or 'inverted Frank Sinclair' – while Michy Batshuayi looked potent in his cameo for Belgium at Euro 2016. That said, there are rumours of the Blues re-signing Romelu Lukaku, which would presumably mean selling Batshuayi and then buying him back a few years down the line for considerably more money. Remember: Abramovich is a businessman.

Chelsea also have the truly enormous benefit of no European commitments this year. That is genuinely going to be worth seven to 10 points over the season, assuming the team is performing.

And, with Conte terrifying the shit out of everyone by threatening to murder them, they really should be. After their annus horribilis, the Blues must once again be considered title contenders this term.

@W_F_Magge & @Jim_Weeks

Next up: Crystal Palace, Everton, Hull City and Leicester City