LONDON -- It was roughly 90 minutes before kickoff when the Fulham team bus alighted on Stevenage Road and Premier League footballers ambled into Craven Cottage for the first top-flight fixture in these parts for over four years.

Home fans were there in number to greet them, white replica shirts on their backs, broad new-season grins on their faces, the warm August sunshine gently beating down on their heads. The names and numbers melded pride in last's season swashbuckling promotion charge -- MITROVIC...

The Premier League is back! A new season brings fresh optimism and hope for the campaign ahead -- but how are the clubs shaping up?

ESPN FC's club correspondents, bloggers and staff run the rule over all 20 teams and predict their final position in 2018-19. 

Using last season's table, with the three promoted teams at the bottom, here's a look at each club's season ahead.

MAN CITY

Biggest signing and biggest loss: It's hard to think that there was too much missing from Manchester City's...

Can there be anything in football more magnificent than the goal from an overhead kick?

When Gareth Bale scored exactly that goal on Saturday in a Champions League final, the acme of elite-club-football competition, it was literally breath-taking. The stage, the spectacle made it possibly the greatest goal ever scored.

But for all the beauty of that goal and how it will undoubtedly be admired throughout the ages, it wasn't even the most important scored that day. That accolade rests with Tom...

Back in the autumn, promotion looked not so much a distant dream as a laughable fantasy for Fulham, languishing in the lower half of the Championship with internal disagreements making anything beyond survival look like the height of optimism.

But an extraordinary unbeaten run of 23 games, stretching from December to May, took them to within a whisker of automatic promotion. And on Sunday they completed the job, beating Aston Villa 1-0 in the playoff final to return to the Premier League. So who...

LONDON -- Three quick thoughts from Fulham's 1-0 win over Aston Villa in the Championship playoff final at Wembley, which sees the Cottagers return to the Premier League after four seasons in England's second division.

1. Cairney sends Fulham back to the big time

Fulham are back in the Premier League after four years away, Tom Cairney's 23rd-minute winner edging them past Aston Villa in a tense and increasingly chaotic Championship playoff final. They won despite playing the last quarter...

The summer window opens soon and Transfer Talk has the latest rumours.

Pochettino wants huge Spurs shake-up

This could be a big summer at Tottenham -- the Telegraph reports that Mauricio Pochettino "will ask chairman Daniel Levy and owner Joe Lewis to sanction a £150 million overhaul of his squad."

A 5-4 win over Leicester saw Spurs finish third in the Premier League, but Pochettino wants them to take the next step.

The Telegraph says he is asking for funds "to bring in the players he wants...