It's looking a lot like same again

Appropriately enough for the season in which VAR takes its bow at the elite end of the English club game, the consensus is the new Premier League season will have a strong whiff of deja vu about it.

Whatever way you study the big picture starting out, whether in real-time, slo-mo or from multiple angles, it’s hard to come to any conclusion other than that last year’s top two will ultimately dominate again, with the best of the rest struggling, perhaps even more than last season, to keep up.