No, the Monday Moan is not returning. Yet.

Twitter/Chelsea FC

Faithful readers will recall, two years ago, how my Mondays became typified by a weekly rant about Chelsea, as their Premier League title defence - and their season - went rapidly down the toilet. I'll spare you the history, but yesterday, I studiously went about avoiding a reinstigation of the 'Monday Moan' from the 2015-2016 football season. This was more out of blind hope that Chelsea's defeat to Arsenal in the Community Shield (again) and implosive defeat on Saturday at home to Burnley weren't harbingers of a carbon copy of what happened exactly two years ago.

As I wrote last week, following the Wembley game, the signs were uncannily there. All that the Burnley match lacked was Antonio Conte replicating José Mourinho's Basil Fawlty-style touchline meltdown. In fact, Conte was markedly unimpassioned at Stamford Bridge on Saturday: very little of the cardiac-endangering histrionics and constant barking of unintelligible instructions. For much of the game he just stood there, only moving out of his technical area to attempt a remonstration with the fourth official after another of referee Craig Pawson's pedantic decisions, only to be held back by Carlo Cudicini and prevent a bad afternoon getting worse.

To briefly return to the 2015 season, part of Chelsea's spiralling malaise was the result of Mourinho's demeanour. Unhappy at the progress of inter-season signings, frustrated by his own decision to start pre-season training late and, despite signing a lucrative new deal days before the season opener, letting rip at club doctor Eva Carneiro as she ran onto the field to attend to Eden Hazard, publicly demoting her days later. The mood in camp visibly suffered, and Mourinho was gone by December.

Conte has been installed by the bookies as favourite to be the first Premier League managerial casualty of the season. This, though, is not new: he was widely tipped for the sack a year ago as Chelsea's put in a confounding opening spell (2-1 wins over West Ham and Watford, a comprehensive 3-0 win over Burnley, then a 2-2 draw with Swansea followed by the home defeat to Liverpool and the 3-0 demolition by Arsenal that saw Conte switch to the wing-back system that would sustain them to the title). We mustn't, then, be rash. Saturday's loss to Burnley can be seen as an opening day blip, and indeed, despite the 2-3 scoreline and dismissal of both Gary Cahill and Cesc Fàbregas, the manner with which Chelsea fought back in the second half gave the home fans much to feel better about, especially Alvaro Morata's debut goal.

What happens next - and that includes Sunday's return to Wembley to play Spurs - will be down to Conte. And here is where the worry is. He is a very different personality to Mourinho, who maintains a brooding, simmering sense of victimhood even when he's done nothing wrong. Conte, on the other hand, while not exactly effervescent, is a highly personable individual, until he pulls on the tracksuit and - normally - leaps about the touchline as if someone is repeatedly jabbing him with a cattle prod. But his somnolent stance against Burnley spoke volumes. Whether his team selection was a message to the Chelsea board (and Roman Abramovich in particular) or not, the game's outcome should have been the clear instruction to bring in the reinforcements Conte has been demanding for months. Ahead of the Tottenham game, Chelsea are without Cahill and Fàbregas (suspension), Hazard and new central midfielder Tiemoue Bakayoko, as well as possibly Pedro (injury), Diego Costa (extended hissy fit back in Brazil), and having sold Nemanja Matic, Nathaniel Chalobah and Nathan Aké, and loaned out Ruben Loftus-Cheek, amongst several others, will have little-to-no first team experience available to fill the gaps.

According to The Times today, Conte remains at odds with the club over his transfer targets as many of them are older players with limited resale value. And yet most come with a hefty price tag because a) it's Chelsea and b) they're getting increasingly desperate. On top of that, the club hierarchy wants players with a long-term career path, whereas Conte is only looking at the short term of competing in this season's domestic competitions as well as the Champions League. All of a sudden his two-year contract - albeit on improved financial terms - is starting to look somewhat finite.

Along with death and taxes, the only other constant we have to contend with is that Chelsea managers are not forever. We learned that in the Ken Bates era, and thus it has proven relentlessly under Abramovich. The thing is, can we Chelsea fans put up with the constant upheaval when we're also benefiting from the trophies that do still seem to come? Longevity can be seen as both a blessing and a curse. Manchester United built a dynasty with Sir Alex Ferguson, but also paid the price of not making a change at a time when the squad itself was needing a refresh. And, then, there's Arsenal, with the stubborn Wenger hanging on and still delivering some semblance of success.

I'm writing as if Conte has already been sacked...or walked. I don't wish him to, and one defeat on the opening day doesn't condemn an entire season. But with new players not materialising, and a long season ahead - including the unpredictable intensity of the Champions League - you could hardly say that Chelsea are marching forwards with any strength. True, there are bright spots: Morata's pull-downs and goal on Saturday demonstrated a class improvement over the ineffective Batshuayi; Antonio Rudiger looks a quality buy to strengthen the defence while Andreas Christensen looked a more assured central defender compared with the loaned-out Kurt Zuma. But with talk still of Chelsea bringing in Virgil van Dijk from Southampton, Danny Drinkwater from Leicester and even Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain from Arsenal, not to mention long-term targets like Alex Sandro from Juventus, there is still an overwhelming sense of work-in-progress with Chelsea, one league game in, and just over two weeks of the transfer window left. It'll be interesting to see what the squad looks like as that window slams shut. Not to mention who will be in charge of it...

Don't panic!! Well, not yet at least...

It's OK. No need to panic. Yes, I know we've been here before: a Community Shield encounter with Arsenal, a frustrated manager bemoaning the lack of signings, an apparent lack of confidence in front of goal, and a Premier League title to defend, but lightning can't strike twice, right? Right? Antonio Conte's gloomy fear of suffering "the Mourinho season", following an indifferent start that rapidly went downhill until the manager was sacked in December, can't happen again. Can it?

Based on the period since Chelsea lifted the Premier League trophy in May, it can. Not that it will, but the mood around the reigning English champions has been skittish to say the least. The parallels with the post-2015/16 season disaster are glaring, not least because of the manager's frustrations with the transfer activity (or lack of), but also in the fact that Antonio Conte - like Mourinho did shortly before that infamous opening game against Swansea on August 8, 2015 - has just signed an improved contract himself. Then there has been the substantial list of target players who've failed to show up, including Romelu Lukaku, gazumped by Manchester United.

Yesterday's draw at Wembley (settled with one of the more soul-crushing penalty shootouts you'll ever see without anyone wearing an England shirt) was another exercise in humility for Chelsea. Whatever hubris generated by last season has been reset to zero over the last few weeks. Beaten on that very turf, by the very same team, at the FA Cup Final in May, they exhibited none of the exciting swagger and even youthful exuberance of their compelling win over Arsenal during the pre-season tour in Singapore. In fact it was, too all intents and purposes, a complete re-run of the cup final, the game that determined that these two teams would meet again less than three months later at the same venue. That Victor Moses redeemed himself with a fine goal to erase the memory of a woeful performance in May that saw him sent off and Chelsea exposed, was negated by Pedro's rash raking of Mohamed Elneny's Achilles, the arguably extreme instant red card, and then Arsenal equalising from the subsequent free kick.

Twitter/Simon Johnson

The Community Shield is never billed as anything more than a curtain-raiser. Even Pedro's dismissal won't count when Chelsea kick off their title defence against Burnley next Saturday, as the Wembley game is considered a friendly. But as the Twitter cliché goes, there is no such thing as a friendly, especially when Chelsea and Arsenal meet. However, yesterday's game was an interesting, if subtle projection of managerial styles. Arsène Wenger stating in his post-match interview that he needs to cut down his first team squad of 33, with Antonio Conte reiterating his increasingly urgent need for signings - not that he needed to say anything.

There is still much to like about the Chelsea that won the 2016-17 English title, but there are also some glaring gaps. David Luiz - for all his charisma and chutzpah on the pitch - gave glimpses of his more maverick self yesterday. He's a wonderfully entertaining individual, but he also needs to remember that he's not infallible. He needs tougher competition for that position to keep him sharp. And Marcos Alonso, who sometimes doesn't get praised enough, can also easily demonstrate why he was something of a last-minute panic buy last summer.

But the bigger worry for me is that with Eden Hazard out injured, and Diego Costa resorting to doing workouts from the family garden in Brazil while he waits his return to Atlético Madrid, Chelsea are looking threadbare for real creativity. Alvaro Morata will get there, eventually, and Michy Batshuayi has come on leaps and bounds in the short space of time he's been leading the line, but even he looked profligate in front of goal yesterday. Pedro and Willian will continue to vie for starting roles in which their pace and guile can be applied, and Cesc Fàbregas will continue to supply inch-perfect passes - when he's allowed to play, and clearly at the cost of having the more defensive-minded Tiemoue Bakayoko play alongside Kante in the role he was bought for. But...

There are missing parts. Conte's summer refrain about signings has not been out of moody, Mourinho-style petulance, but a genuine concern that, while Chelsea's business dealings have seen a good amount of money come in for the likes of Nemanja Matic, Bertrand Traore, Nathan Aké and Nathaniel Chalobah, the £130 million spent so far on Antonio Rudiger, Bakayoko and Morata is not enough. In any normal time, and in any normal, non-inflationary market, £130 would be the most you could spend on a slew of signings. But we are not in a normal time, and Neymar's ridiculous move to PSG last week has merely poured a flammable liquid on the raging nonsense that is player valuations. Sadly, that means Chelsea will need to conform to this new reality if they're to bring in the players Conte wants and be able to compete with the affluence of domestic spenders like Manchesters United and City, or those they'll be facing this season in Europe.

The worry, though, is that time is running out to bring in anyone of quality. The double-edged sword of that is that anyone of quality either has the door shut on them by their present club, or a silly price tag slapped on them to keep suitors at bay. And the next thing you know, you're watching Sky Sports and live video of David Luiz, smirking his way through St. Pancras on transfer deadline day, and the feeling that, proverbially speaking, the slow ones are being played at the school disco, and you've missed out on the one you had your eye on all night long.