guardian.co.uk writers' prediction: 1st Odds: 15/8
He might not think he's all that special, but Chelsea fans are confident that life under Luiz Felipe Scolari will be more than just so-so. Last season the Blues came within two points of the title and one shanked penalty of winning the Champions League with a manager whose methods were "25 years behind the times". How, then, might they fare under the guidance of a World Cup winning manager?
Recent revisionism has seen Avram Grant's reign cast in a more favourable light, yet his tactical naivety cost Chelsea at crucial moments last season. Chelsea's inability to close out a win at Tottenham in March - where they led 1-0, 3-1 and then 4-3 before drawing 4-4 - was a damning indictment of Grant, but it was in Moscow where his inexperience was most painfully exposed. He wasn't the only one caught off guard by Manchester United's return to 4-4-2, but it was foolish to assume - as Grant very publicly did - that Sir Alex Ferguson would have no surprises in store after his team had been outmuscled and outplayed less than a month earlier at Stamford Bridge.
Scolari's supposedly combustible personality has already led to much speculation about how he will handle Ferguson's "mind-games", yet Chelsea should be more concerned with how they approach games against lesser opponents. Last season they beat United and Arsenal at Stamford Bridge yet still contrived to draw seven times there in the league, including matches against Wigan, Bolton and Fulham.
Chelsea scored just twice in those three games, and Scolari's testing of a 4-4-2 formation this pre-season is driven by the need to avoid any repeat of that, rather than any desire to "entertain" his owner Roman Abramovich. Scolari's natural preference may be for 4-2-3-1 - though he had little choice but to use it in Portugal, given the country's wealth of attacking midfielders and dearth of strikers - but he also knows Chelsea cannot afford another month like last September, when they failed to score in four consecutive league games and picked up just two points as a consequence.
Chelsea hardly need worry about the defensive implications of fielding one fewer midfielder. Their back four is formidable, and will be all the more so following the signing of José Bosingwa - not only a more accomplished defender than Juliano Belletti, but quicker and more energetic going forward. On the other side, Ashley Cole has quietly increased his consistency after a patchy start to life at Chelsea, and his deputy, Wayne Bridge, remains more talented than all but a handful of other sides' starters.
The greatest move Chelsea made all summer, though, was simply to retain Ricardo Carvalho, who at one point looked set to join Jose Mourinho at Internazionale. John Terry, as captain, may be commonly perceived as the beating heart of Chelsea's back four but the statistics suggest the club's best-paid player is not all that. Last season Chelsea picked up 2.62 points per game when Carvalho was playing, compared with just 1.76 when he was absent, while the club actually gained fewer when Terry played (2.09) than when he didn't (2.47). The latter is an anomaly - caused in part by Terry playing through injuries - but then Chelsea did not miss Terry that much in 2006-07 either, when they gained 2.21 with him and 2.10 without. In the same year they gained 2.35 with Carvalho, and 1.43 without.
Both will start when fit, of course, especially given Alex's at-times-unconvincing displays in their absence last year, but the picture is far less clear elsewhere. Neither formation will permit Scolari to find room for Michael Essien, Deco, Michael Ballack, Frank Lampard and Jon Obi Mikel in one midfield. Essien's muscular dynamism makes him the most secure - Chelsea were instantly more vulnerable whenever he was removed from midfield to fill in at right-back last season.
Mikel looks ready to replace the departed Claude Makelele as the resident destroyer, but the other three must already be wondering which of them will be playing 2008-09's Steve Sidwell. Deco may have been criticised for losing interest at Barcelona last season, but given the proportion of his team-mates who had done likewise it is tempting to blame the coaching, and he still seemed to save his best for the biggest games. Ballack, meanwhile, was a driving force in Chelsea's end-of-season surge, and it may yet be that Lampard finds himself wishing he had been more receptive to Inter's advances. Either way, Scolari will need to massage a few egos if he is to prevent dressing room unrest.
If Chelsea's luxury of riches appears to give Scolari a pleasant dilemma in the middle, there are more vexing questions elsewhere. Joe Cole, on the field for more minutes than any other Chelsea player last season, was the club's only consistent performer on either wing, whilst Didier Drogba's a sulkiness and frequent absence deprived the club of its only consistent goalscoring striker.
Scolari has named both Florent Malouda and Andriy Shevchenko as players he believes can be rehabilitated and for all that the mere mention of those names provokes groans among some supporters, he is right to do so. Malouda would not be the first player to struggle in his first Premier League season only to go on to greater things, and Scolari believes he can bring more out of the player by relaxing his defensive responsibilities. Shevchenko, meanwhile, was actually the team's most clinical finisher last term. His five goals came at a rate of one goal every 148.2 minutes on the pitch - better even than Drogba (one every 191.1 minutes). Salomon Kalou and Claudio Pizarro each required more than 300 minutes per goal, while Nicolas Anelka's one strike in 14 appearances speaks for itself. Opta stats also show Shevchenko led the team's strikers for percentage of shots on target (59%) and "chance conversion" (23%).
Drogba, of course, has already shown he can do better if sufficiently healthy and motivated, while Anelka, who scored four in a friendly against Milan last week, is too talented not to do better this term. Simply allowing him to play in his natural role through the middle would bring instant improvement. The highly-rated Argentine 19-year-old Franco di Santo may also make an impact before the season is over.
The bookies make Manchester United favourites for the title but Chelsea have a more talented squad and were undone last year only by a United team elevated by Ferguson and the league's best player in Cristiano Ronaldo. This season, Chelsea have a canny manager of their own, while Ronaldo looks set to miss the first two months of the season for United. With the margins at the top as slim as they have been in nearly a decade, Chelsea don't hope to win the league, they expect it. If they don't manage it, Phil Scolari could be out of work come May.
In: José Bosingwa (Porto - £16.2m), Deco (Barcelona - £7m)
Out: Steve Sidwell (Aston Villa - £5m), Hernán Crespo (Inter - free), Khalid Boulahrouz (Stuttgart - undisclosed), Claude Makelele (Paris St Germain - free), Ben Sahar (Portsmouth - loan), Jimmy Smith (Sheffield Wednesday - loan), Ryan Bertrand (Norwich - loan), Tal Ben Haim (Manchester City - undisclosed), Harry Worley (Leicester - free)
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