The Premier League returns on Friday 21 August, when Arsenal begin the defence of a title they won with 85 points against a Coventry City side that was in the Championship three months ago. Behind the champions, the summer has done something unusual to the top of the division: four of the clubs expected to chase them will start the season under a manager who was not in the job at the end of last season.
Four new managers
Manchester City finished second on 78 points and have replaced Pep Guardiola, after 10 years, with Enzo Maresca. He has history at the club, having won the Premier League 2 there and worked on Guardiola's backroom staff during the Treble season, and City paid Chelsea compensation to bring him back. He arrived having walked out of Stamford Bridge on New Year's Day.
Liverpool finished fifth on 60 points, 25 behind Arsenal, and removed Arne Slot two seasons after he won the title in his first. Andoni Iraola, who had just taken Bournemouth to sixth, was the only candidate interviewed and signed a two-year deal, in keeping with a career preference for short contracts. "You don't need a lot of things to get attracted by Liverpool. Liverpool is Liverpool," he said on his appointment. Things would have to change at Anfield, he added, but he did not want to lose the identity he had built at Bournemouth: the intensity, the aggressiveness, the organisation.