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Does pre-season matter?
- Updated: July 20, 2016
Worried about pre-season? We examine the past records of some of the top teams for evidence of whether summer form has any significance at all.
Jose Mourinho’s words of a year ago have taken on added significance since. “Pre-season is fake, for good and for bad,” he said, following Chelsea’s 4-2 defeat to a second-string New York Red Bulls side. “If you’re very bad, it’s fake, and if you’re too good, it’s fake.”
If Mourinho was hoping his Chelsea players would prove that result to be a one-off aberration, their subsequent struggles weren’t the best way of proving the argument. They went on to produce the worst defence of the Premier League title ever seen.
The feeling was that Mourinho had planned a more low-key start to the season in order to peak later but with the benefit of hindsight, there were signs of unease that day. The coach allegedly reprimanded a member of staff for using their phone during the game.
The memory of the Stamford Bridge crowd chanting Eva Carneiro’s name during another friendly against Fiorentina on the eve of the big kick-off now adds to the apparent foreboding. Most agree that the seeds of the subsequent problems were sown that summer.
And yet, pre-season can provide plenty of white noise too. A 3-0 defeat to Wolfsburg the previous summer offered no clue as to what was to follow. Chelsea promptly embarked on a 21-game unbeaten run as they marched to the Premier League title.
Indeed, the evidence for pre-season form mirroring what follows is …
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