Chelsea is coming into this 1st match of the season off of an awful year where they finished in 12th place and were a complete mess under their new owner with absolutely no direction as a team. They have sold a lot of their players in the transfer window though and now they have a solid core group of players with a direction to go in. Chelsea is going to be a much improved team this season and it will help a lot that they are not in any European competitions this year so they will only have Premier League matches to focus on and will be motivated to get back into the top 4 in a very competitive league this year. They are going up against a Liverpool side that is coming off of a season where they finished in 5th place as they were in disarray on the pitch in a lot of their matches, but they started to gel a lot more near the end of last season and were very close to getting into that top 4 spot. They are not going to be happy with being in Europa League this season and they also made some moves in the transfer window to improve their team like the signing of Mac Allister which is sure to bring some stability and a much needed direction to their attack. Liverpool has a very strong attack this year and they did score a lot of goals last year with their potent attack, but this season their attack will be even stronger with their new signings and they are going to be eager to come out strong in this match so they do not fall into the same hole they were in early last season. Liverpool had a big problem on defense last season though as they did allow a lot of goals and they did not do much to improve their defense for this year which is their biggest issue on the team. Chelsea is also going to be eager for a strong start after last year and their much improved attack is going to find the net on this shaky Liverpool defense here at home. The last 4 straight meetings between these two sides have actually all ended in 0-0 draws but these are 2 very different teams now and both are going to be hungry for 3 points here to start the season. Between these two sides, there will be enough goals in this match to push it over 2.5 goals.