The Athletic FC Podcast Podcast Network.

Hello, I'm Michael Bailey, and the new season starts here.

Welcome to the preview on the Athletic FC, where each week we'll be going deep on the biggest game of the weekend.

This week, opening week, we're focusing on the ever-changing

Chelsea who host Premier League Champions Manchester City on Sunday

and later in the show.

We'll look ahead to the games featuring the teams from the club

podcasts across our network. With me for a preview of Sunday's game at the bridge is Tim Spears.

Well hey. And John Mackenzie.

Yo, yo!

Tim, looking forward to the new season, I hope?

Yeah, as of today, yeah.

It's taken a while for me to get back into it.

You know, it's a long season, last season, then the euros and it's felt like a quick turnaround,

doesn't it? But yeah, I've, in doing my research for this podcast, I started to get excited. So here we are.

A, I'm glad you're excited and B, I'm glad you've done research.

John, how's your summer been?

Oh yeah, fantastic, it's been nice.

I managed to have a break where I didn't think too much about football.

But now we're back, we have the raw materials are coming back for us analysts

because it's all well and good talking about teams when nothing's happening but

it's nice to have a bit of tape to have a watch of and say these problems I saw

...