Welcome back, you champions, you. Seems like only yesterday everyone was cavorting in the sun celebrating another wonderful league title success. But the pages of the football calendar must keep turning, and Chelsea are about to embark on our 83rd season in the top flight, the 29th in succession.

Excitingly, the Blues are contemplating becoming the Premier League’s first carry-on campiones for almost a decade. The last club to defend the title successfully were Manchester United in 2009. Chelsea do have a precedent, though, having achieved the feat impressively in 2006.

For that to happen again will require a substantially more rigorous title defence than in 2015/16, and that is just one of the fresh challenges head coach Antonio Conte faces in his second campaign with the Azzurri of west London.

Conte’s remarkable maiden season success was founded on exceptional improvement through hard work. In fact, over the past two seasons Leicester City and Chelsea won the title by making remarkable year-on-year points upgrades of 40 and 43 respectively.

No-one is expecting the Blues to repeat that sensational, record-equaling 13-match winning streak, because no season unfolds the same as the one preceding it. But do not rule it out: the Italian made a habit of exceeding expectations in successive campaigns while in Turin.

Inevitably, some of our champions have departed since the same time last year, and this is the first squad in many, many years not to benefit from the presence of the captain, leader, legend that was John Terry.