I will get the extreme pessimism out of the way up top, then move on to evaluating Burnley’s manager, squad and transfers without hammering on about this over and over again: They’re huge favorites to get relegated. Their goal is to not be one of the worst Premier League teams of all time and avoid the creation of a depressing, toxic atmosphere. Matching the campaign that Ipswich posted last season — 22 points and a -46 goal differential — would constitute a success.

This might sound like an outrageous thing to say about a team that posted 100 points in the Championship, but Burnley’s run to that position was utterly improbable. As we’ll cover in the next section, the Clarets overperformed their xG significantly on both ends of the pitch, and did not possess the same level of quality as Leeds, the other team that was automatically promoted on 100 points.

I promise the genuine negativity ends there and will not be utterly relentless. Burnley’s players, staff and fans should be extremely proud of their accomplishment, and they have set themselves up for financial security and further challenges to break into the established Premier League order in the future. While they were lucky to collect the points haul they did, they were genuinely the 2nd best team in the Championship, and deserved their promotion.

Their responsible spending thus far in the transfer window suggests that management is not delusional and knows exactly what’s happening here. That has usually been the case at Burnley, a perpetually well-run club that punches above its financial and historical weight.

The numbers are pretty shocking. Burnley conceded 13 non-penalty goals in 46 games last season, a truly outrageous defensive record. They overperformed their xG conceded by over 20. As we’ll get into when we hit the transfer section, goalkeeper James Trafford was a massive part of this. But you don’t get a record like that from either pure luck or great goalkeeping alone — a combination of both is required.

Burnley also overperformed their xG for by a less outrageous but still extremely significant 14. Josh Brownhill, who left the club on a free despite being offered a new contract, was by far the biggest contributor to this with 15 non-penalty goals from 6.42 npxG.

A really impressive thing about Burnley is that they seemed to get better as the season went on. The early fall didn’t have particularly impressive performances, but they were very comfortably the 2nd best team in the league after the first couple of months. They didn’t lose another game after November 3. Even though they were lucky defensively, they were also genuinely quite good.

If someone had told you near the end of Scott Parker’s playing career that he’d turn into a yo-yo manager who’s quite good at getting teams promoted to the Premier League but not good at keeping them there, you’d have said “yeah that’s about right.” It’ll be interesting to see if Parker hangs onto his job if things are looking grim at Christmas, given that he’ll be the best man for the job next season.

I genuinely love this radar comparing Burnley’s attack to the Championship league average. Cue Pam from the U.S. version of The Office saying “they’re the same picture.” We’ll get into what they do tactically, but statistically, they’re absolutely nothing interesting.

It’s amazing how good Burnley were defensively even if you just look at them in terms of xG and shots conceded, taking their actual goals conceded out of the equation. If they had conceded 34 times last season as they “should” have, they’d still have been outstanding.

Burnley took quite a few defensive actions high up the pitch, but if they didn’t win the ball back quickly, they didn’t press maniacally. Once opponents settled into possession, they were happy to let them have the ball as long as it wasn’t in dangerous areas. They pressured a surprisingly low percentage of opponent passes for a 100 point team.

Burnley most often played in a fairly standard 4-2-3-1 formation with a mid-block defense, and a central attacking midfielder who was more of a runner and shooter than playmaker. They were excellent at drawing opponents forward and scoring on fast counter-attacks, something they’ll have a lot of chances to do in the top flight. They weren’t terribly dissimilar from Nottingham Forest in the Prem, scoring a lot of quite stylish goals to go ahead, then getting more conservative to hold a lead.

After the extreme whiplash of going from Sean Dyche’s longball style to Vincent Kompany’s possession-heavy game, Burnley will probably be happy to have found Parker’s happy medium, which is also quite an easy style of play to recruit for.

If you’re looking to huff a bit of Burnley copium, they’ll certainly have to make a much less dramatic adjustment to their style to stay up in the Premier League than Leeds will.

As a note, all of Jaidon Anthony, Marcus Edwards, Zian Flemming and Bashir Humphreys were signed permanently after joining the club on loan last season. They are omitted from this section besides this paragraph, since they represent continuity, rather than squad changes, as the section header suggests. All of those players performed well for Burnley last season and are good pickups at £7-10m fees.

Players out: CB CJ Egan-Riley, AM Josh Brownhill, GK James Trafford, CM Han-Noah Massengo, W Nathan Redmond, LW Jeremy Sarmiento (loan ended)

Egan-Riley and Brownhill both decided to leave the team despite being offered new contracts. Egan-Riley has signed for Marseille, while Brownhill is still a free agent. These players both played over 3500 minutes for Burnley last year and were two of their best players.

Burnley were at least able to collect a £31m fee for Trafford, but holy moly, there’s no replacing this kind of shot stopping. This was the best goalkeeper in the Championship last season by some margin.

Massengo and Redmond were bit-part players, and Burnley will probably be quite happy to not pay their wages anymore.

Players in: GK Max Weiß, LB Quilindschy Hartman, CB Axel Tuanzebe, RW Loum Tchaouna, RB Kyle Walker, LW Jacob Bruun Larsen

Burnley have spent sensibly, with none of thee players costing more than £13m. However, there are quite a few gambles in here. The largest fee was paid for 21-year-old Loum Tchaouna, who’s tough to evaluate after playing very few minutes on Lazio last season, and playing for a poor Salernitana team in the previous campaign. Hartman and Brunn Larson also had very limited minutes last season, we’re out here playing the lottery.

Continuing with the theme of “these guys must really trust their traditional scouts,” this is the guy they’re tasking with replacing Trafford. Weiß does not have impressive shot-stopping numbers.

Tuanzebe arrives on a free to give some decent depth at CB, and Walker should provide some much-needed veteran leadership, though he probably can’t be counted on for much more than that at this stage of his career.

A quick summary:

On first glance, this looks grim. That’s not to say that Burnley definitely got worse — they lost guys who played a lot of minutes and racked up stats in the Championship, and replaced them with players who came from bigger leagues that play fewer games — but there’s not a lot of proven production here. They’re hoping that several new signings improve on what they did last season at their previous clubs.

I like the 4 loans that Burnley made permanent, but I really do not like the new arrivals.

Despite links to Tottenham and other more established Premier League clubs, Burnley convinced star central defender Maxime Esteve to sign a new contract with the club.

There’s no word about whether or not it contains a relegation release clause, but that’s irrelevant to this season. The Clarets retained their defensive rock, and they’ll need him to duplicate his Championship performance to be competitive in the Premier League this season.

Esteve’s passing numbers are not particularly impressive, which might have scared more possession-oriented teams off from bidding for him. But as an actual defender, he was a monster last season, almost never getting dribbled past or committing fouls while also winning a high percentage of aerials.

These skills will be on display even more this season, and Esteve will have much less margin for error.

Jaidon Anthony has been in this situation before. After an extremely promising 2021-22 season in the Championship for Bournemouth, he struggled in the Premier League. He also struggled to brush off that disappointment in a loan spell with Leeds the following campaign, but things turned around last season.

He did a little bit of everything for Burnley, and won a £8m permanent transfer with 8 goals and 6 assists. Anthony contributed as a dribbler, shooter and presser, splitting his time equally on the left or right wing depending on what his team needed game-to-game. Trafford, Brownhill and Esteve might have captured more headlines, but Anthony might have been the low key MVP.

Once again, Anthony finds himself in the situation of playing for a Premier League team that might not enable him to succeed individually after a great Championship season. I’m looking forward to seeing if he’s better equipped to handle it this time around, because he was great to watch in the 2nd tier last year.

The biggest question mark in the Burnley team will be how they replace Brownhill. They’ve gone with a variety of different lineups in preseason, and it’s not clear who will be first choice in the attacking midfield role. I could see all of Edwards, Anthony and Larsen — all best as wingers — getting shots at the No. 10 role as Parker searches for a way to get his most talented footballers on the pitch at the same time.

It’s tough to see Zian Flemming’s 12 goals in the Championship translating to much production in the Premier League, but he was an extremely willing and effective presser last season. His physical abilities and work rate will be key to giving Burnley a chance to succeed this year.

The starting left back role is a pure toss-up between Hartman and Humphreys, who both cost significant transfer fees. Humphreys has missed Burnley’s preseason games with a minor injury, so he’s unlikely to have the starting role for the first game of the season.

Hopefully Burnley can put together a competitive season, but our contributors have voted them most likely to finish bottom.

Prediction: 20th