Manchester United legend and 8-time Premier League champion Gary Neville believes Chelsea are the favourites for the league next season, despite their title rivals all strengthening.

Jose Mourinho’s side finished last season’s campaign eight points clear of Manchester City, and were crowned champions for the first time since 2010.

Chelsea’s league rivals have already been relatively busy in the transfer market. Arsenal have been linked with various stars, and signed goalkeeper Petr Cech from Chelsea. Manchester United have signed Memphis Depay and are in negotiations with Sergio Ramos. Liverpool have already completed 6 signings, the best of those including Roberto Firmino and James Milner.

With Chelsea’s rivals bulking their squads the Blues have responded by signing Falcao on loan, and Gary Neville believes that Mourinho’s men will go all the way again in the next campaign, despite their rivals going in hard so far this window.

“We’re in July when teams haven’t completed their business yet; that’s something I think you’ve got to be very careful about at this stage,” he told Sky Sports News.

“But as I stand here today, I think it would be very difficult to look to past Chelsea. However, who knows what is going to happen in the next month in terms of signings and how those signings will then come in and adapt.”

“Things can always happen and you could look at a team in a month’s time and think ‘they’re going to take some stopping with the people they’ve signed’, we haven’t seen the transfer market flush itself out yet.”

“But certainly now, without the business having been done, you aren’t as informed as you’d like to be, but Chelsea would be the team to beat and I think everyone would say that.”

What Neville says is very true. There’s still a long way to go, yet as it stands you’d still have to fancy Chelsea with their squads quality.