Chelsea Premier League preview: Blues desperate to stop the rot

Under Thomas Tuchel, Graham Potter and then Frank Lampard, Chelsea endured a tough campaign fraught with an array of erratic transfer spending, completely impotent and lacklustre displays, and something of a mishmash of young players coming in the door.

A lack of identity, leadership or consistency saw the Blues plummet down into the bottom half of the table, narrowly avoiding getting shockingly sucked into a relegation scrap by the end of it all.

Caretaker boss Frank Lampard has since departed, as have some key figures on the playing staff. 

The likes of N'Golo Kante, Kalidou Koulibaly and Edouard Mendy have all set sail for Saudi Arabia, while the club has taken something of a risk in letting big names like Mateo Kovacic and Mason Mount depart for their domestic rivals up in Manchester.

While Mount himself had a tricky season and wasn't at his best, Kovacic still turned out to be one of their better performers. Both have been the club's player of the season in the not-too-distant past.

They've also allowed German Kai Havertz to board a bus over to London rivals Arsenal, who have clearly leapfrogged the Blues in terms of quality and standing for the time being.

Will the West London club regret these big decisions?

Stability and redemption

Chelsea will also be praying some stability can arise from the full-time appointment of former Tottenham head coach Mauricio Pochettino.

Their trigger-happy owners will be hoping the Argentine's track record of building "projects" and working with younger players will see the club in good stead for the future and help to set them on some sort of competitive path to redemption.

Chelsea's misery last season couldn't have been more evident than in the tail end of the campaign, as from the end of March they went on a torrid winless run in the league that lasted until the start of May.

Even then, their victory over Bournemouth was the sole win during a disappointing (to say the least) stretch of 12 games, which featured seven quite humiliating losses.

They also couldn't buy a goal once Lampard had come in, finishing with a measly total of 38 scored by the end of the season.

This is not a great return for a club that is coming scarily close to spending £1 billion on transfers in the space of just 12 months.

Hope on the horizon

There are some whiffs of optimism about the Bridge currently, but quite frankly there has to be as things can't really get much worse.

They are without European football for the first time since the 1999/2000 season, but that hasn't stopped the club from continuing to attract some of the top young talents across the world of football. Lengthy and lucrative contracts will certainly help, mind.

Amongst the newcomers are the likes of Nicolas Jackson from Villareal and Christopher Nkunku from RB Leipzig, both of whom have looked positive in pre-season and should bring goals. 

Nkunku was the top scorer in last season's Bundesliga and has enjoyed a productive pre-season, although the club has now revealed that an injury sustained in their final warm-up match has required surgery and he'll miss the first few months of the campaign, at the very least.

So we shouldn't be surprised to see them head back into the market for another forward before the window slams shut.

That is, if they don't decide on one last hurrah with the ever-perplexing Romelu Lukaku, the Belgian forward has returned from his latest spell with Inter but seems to have no apparent future with the club.

It may make sense to keep the big forward around until at least the January window as his services could still be required after all.

They've also brought in an exciting keeper in Robert Sanchez from Brighton, an area Chelsea have struggled with in recent seasons. As mentioned, Mendy has already departed for Saudi Arabia, while Kepa Arrizabalaga still has a major tendency to flatter to deceive.

Another key bit of business was tying young English defender Levi Colwill down to a long-term contract, and he'll undoubtedly have a huge part to play in the coming years, possibly even this season.

Then there's what's left of a squad that's been mightily picked apart across the past 18 months. Thiago Silva continues to impress despite his advancing years but surely can't have a huge amount left in the tank, and it would be dangerous for Chelsea to continue to rely on him so heavily.

Pivotal to Chelsea's hopes will be on both flanks, with Ben Chilwell and Reece James both struggling with injuries throughout the last campaign and rarely making a starting XI in each other's company.

All three will be key to helping the new boys settle and the youngsters develop. James in particular was a massive miss for big chunks of last season and always feels like a notable absence, both with his technical ability and dangerous attacking prowess from wing-back, but also his passion and connection with the Chelsea faithful.

There is a sense of a stacked and potentially competitive squad at Chelsea, filled with talent and interesting raw materials.

Now it is up to the manager to bring everything together.

Time is of the essence

It's hard to predict how things will go for Chelsea, at least in the short term.

We all know Pochettino's style: exciting, fast-paced, high-pressing and counter-attacking football. We know he has the quick, young players to fulfil the initial needs for his preferred system.

But we also know the physical aspect of his style of play takes some adjusting to, and took about six months at Spurs before he really started getting the results.

He had a lot less time to work with at PSG and didn't last long in the job. He didn't win a great deal there, either, considering the advantages he had.

So will he be given the time to build his project at Chelsea? 

On paper, he's the right choice by a country mile. But Chelsea haven't exactly portrayed themselves to be the most rational of clubs in recent years.

Anything that improves on last year is an absolute bonus, but no doubt with the money being spent and the potential being signed, the hierarchy will accept nothing less than a top-six finish - and that's a bare minimum.

Today, that is a lot harder than it sounds, even for a Chelsea side that just two seasons ago was lifting the Champions League trophy aloft. They were some way off from that target last season, and will probably be some way off the likes of Manchester City, Manchester United and Arsenal again this campaign.

And if they're still some way off the likes of Liverpool and Newcastle by Christmas, who's to say the Chelsea board won't go full Oppenheimer and hit the nuclear button again?