Key questions ahead of the new season

Welcome to The Armchair Ultra newsletter where it’s all about a zoomed-out view of our wonderful game. No score updates, transfer speculation, tactics, analysis or any of the other types of football coverage you can find by the bucket load elsewhere. Here we’re purely focused on the narrative beauty of football. The story of how the season unfolds, gradually, across the thousands of games played every season.

Whilst new results flood in each week The Armchair Ultra keep tabs on the important and magic elements of football. The ups and the downs, the purple patches and the rough patches.

We’ll help you keep abreast of the narrative of European football, right here, every month.

🔴 Arsenal - How many times can Arsenal finish as runners-up before doubt tears apart what they’re building? They finally have a striker who loves to find the net, but how he’ll fair in the Premier League is wildly unknown. They’ve demonstrated over the past three years that they have the potential, but can they pull it all together to finally win the Premier League? The competition is seriously tough this season, but they’re certainly contenders.

🦁 Aston Villa - It feels like Aston Villa are onto something special at the moment. Can they establish themselves as perennial European qualifiers? The Armchair Ultra hopes they can because last season’s Champions League journey was incredible. This season it’s the Europa League and it’s looking like a lot of fun! Villa will consider themselves among the favourites.

🐝 Brentford - The Bees have had their core brutally ripped-out this summer. Manager of seven years, club captain, #1 goalkeeper and club talisman, all departing at the same time is seriously rough. The question is simple: can they recover from such major departures?

🍷 Burnley - Guess who’s back? Burnley, of course. Promoted to the Premier League for the fifth time in 16 years. The question for Burnley, however, is more nuanced than simply whether they can stay up (which they’ve failed to do on 3 of their last 4 attempts). Burnley come into the Premier League this time off the back of the best defensive record in English league history. They conceded only 16 goals from 46 matches, keeping 30 clean sheets (tying the record) and never conceding more than one goal in a match (a new record). The interesting question here is how successfully they can replicate that defensive solidity in the Premier League? 

Conceding fewer than 50 goals should be enough to assure survival whilst keeping it to around 40 would put them in rarefied air amongst the best defences in the Premier League. It’s something Burnley have achieved before (in 2017/18 they conceded only 39 goals to finish 7th), but all signs point towards this being their strongest defensive unit ever.

🐦‍🔥 Liverpool - Really The Armchair Ultra just wants to see if Liverpool is the place that will enable Florian Wirtz to take things to the next level. Memories of his Leverkusen debut as a 17 year old babyface during lockdown are still surprisingly fresh in the memory, so his development into a bona fide superstar has felt both inevitable and surprising. He’s only just turned 22.

Yes Liverpool should be retaining their Premier League crown and yes, Liverpool need to be competing for the Champions League trophy, but if Florian Wirtz can deliver on anything near his potential those other pieces should naturally follow. It helps having an exciting squad behind the wonderkid.

🔵 Manchester City - there are clearly questions around exciting new arrivals and important departing faces and around the fallible City of last season, but the key question The Armchair Ultra is interested in is whether Omar Marmoush can become a superstar? Last season he spent the first four months of the season at Eintracht Frankfurt showing he was amongst the very best in the world (20G + 11A in 25 games), only to jump ship in January and struggle to have anywhere near the same impact in the baby blue of City (8G + 1A in 22 games).

🔱 Manchester United - Perhaps sensibly, Manchester United have elected for proven Premier League quality to solve their goal scoring problems. Matheus Cunha and Bryan Mbeumo scored a combined 35 Premier League goals last season, just 9 shy of Manchester United’s total. That tells you how poor United were last season, languishing in 15th after suffering 18 defeats. They can surely only rebound from there, so the question, armed with some exciting new additions, is whether they can rebound to respectability? Internally, the club, I’m sure, will be talking about European qualification and trophies, but I think the minimum expectation needs to be less than 10 defeats. Don’t get beat.

🌳 Nottingham Forest - What could have been… An incredible campaign last season eventually petered out into a 7th place finish, which for a long time looked like it might have been 2nd. Still great, and what a ride it was last season. A Europa League campaign is the reward this season. It’s easy to forget that this came off the back of a 17th place finish, so really the key thing to watch for is whether Forest can prove they are better than the very strong Premier League midfield pack? Brighton, Bournemouth, Brentford, Fulham and Crystal Palace were all very competitive last season and Manchester United and Spurs are likely (although by no means guaranteed) to rebound this season. This campaign will be a defining one for Forest.

🔴 Athletic Club - There’s enough at Athletic Club to make Nico Williams commit his future to the Basque club, signing a ten year contract in favour of a move to Barcelona. At Euro 2024 he looked like a superstar in the making, but he struggled to back that up last season back in Bilbao. Older brother Iñaki outperformed him for goal contributions. But from February, he showed again what he’s capable of, earning himself that bumper contract. It’s rare Athletic Club have the luxury of tying down a superstar for his best years, but alongside prolific midfield goalscorer Oihan Sancet they have something special brewing, can they capitalise on this opportunity by winning some silverware? 

🔴 Bayer Leverkusen - This has been a rough summer for Bayer Leverkusen. With the glory of their unbeaten league and cup double from 2023/24 still in the recent past, they’ve had to say painful farewells to managerial mastermind Xabi Alonso, generational talent Florian Wirtz, vice-captain and defensive stalwart Jonathan Tah, marauding right-back Jeremie Frimpong and the experienced, ever-present Granit Xhaka. A title challenge seems like a long-shot, can they hold-on to second spot?

🍺 Bayern Munich - The Bavarian giants need to win the Champions League. They didn’t spend £90m on Harry Kane just to win the Bundesliga for the 4000th time. They have a strong squad and an all-time great goalscorer: can they make it happen in the Champions League this season? 

🟡 Borussia Dortmund - Dortmund ended last season in hot form, winning six straight, which included a victory over Barcelona in the Champions League quarter-finals. But for too big a chunk of the season they were poor. They lost 11 Bundesliga games, which is the most they’ve lost in a decade. Their hot finish was enough to secure fourth place and a return to the Champions League. A title challenge seems like a stretch, but can they reclaim second spot this season? With Serhou Guirassy lighting-up Signal Iduna Park it should certainly be the ambition. His tally of 34 goals last season matched Robert Lewandowski’s best ever tally in yellow and came in just 2 shy of Aubameyang’s best haul. Make those goals count!

🍕 Napoli - Napoli are reigning Serie A champions again, for the second time in three seasons. Last time they set out to defend their crown, in 2023/24, they floundered. Big time. They finished 10th, 41 points behind eventual winners Inter. Can they retain their title this time around, for the first title repeat in the club’s history? With Scott McTominay anything is possible!

👑 Real Madrid - Real Madrid’s season very much petered out towards the end last year. Barcelona raced off in La Liga and Arsenal made them look like a midtable club in the Champions League. But with Xabi Alonso now at the helm, expectations are high. He has a good squad behind him, including a Kylian Mbappé that plundered 46 goal contributions in his debut season and new signing Trent Alexander-Arnold.

Barcelona looked thrilling last season, so are we set for the renewal of a seismic El Clásico rivalry?

🐺 Roma - Roma’s form under Ranieri through the second half of the season was title-winning form. A poor start to the campaign meant a title tilt was nowhere remotely on the cards, but the form shows the level this team can perform at. Throw into the mix new manager Gian Piero Gasperini and suddenly things get exciting. Gasperini and Roma should be a combination that delivers silverware. That’s the expectation. In Year 1 the challenge is to prove he can make Roma title contenders.