How will Manchester City fare without Pep Guardiola? Will Xabi Alonso improve Chelsea? And how will Arsenal find defending their Premier League title?

These are some of the biggest questions going into the Premier League season.

Former City and England goalkeeper and current BBC Sport pundit Joe Hart gave his views on BBC Radio 5 Live’s Monday Night Club.

With Pep Guardiola stepping down after a trophy-laden decade in charge, new Manchester City manager Enzo Maresca has big shoes to fill at Etihad Stadium, but Hart reckons most of the pressure on the Italian will come “externally”.

Having – briefly – broken the transfer record for an English player to acquire midfielder Elliot Anderson from Nottingham Forest for £116m, Maresca looks likely to lose Spain’s World Cup Golden Ball winner Rodri to Barcelona, although Morocco’s Ayyoub Bouaddi, 18, is in talks to join from Lille for £85.6m.

And the club still want to bring in Chelsea’s Argentina midfielder Enzo Fernandez.

All this against the backdrop of a disappointing 3-0 Community Shield defeat to Arsenal in Cardiff on Sunday.

Hart, who won two league titles with City, said: “I think the club isn’t heaping massive expectation on this season. I think they still believe that they’ve got the team and they’ve got the quality to challenge.

“I still feel they’ll want to be pushing on all fronts. But the same sort of pressure, as an organisation, I don’t think will be on this season… I don’t think they’re going to be put under that pressure internally.

“Externally, there’s always going to be the noise. Maresca will come immediately under fire in terms of how people want to jump all over Man City if they do struggle.

“Internally, I think they’re intelligent enough as a business to understand that what’s going on right now is going to be difficult.”

Having won four titles in a row from 2020-21 to 23-24, City have fallen just short in the past two seasons, and Hart believes Arsenal’s players are about to find out how difficult it is to stay at the top like Guardiola’s teams did earlier in the decade.

Recalling his two titles with City in 11-12 and 13-14, neither of which were defended successfully, Hart said: “I was walking on water at that time. I actually thought I was ‘that guy’.

“And football finds a way, really quickly, of showing you that you’re not. And when things started to unravel, which they will in any season, [they] seemed to really unravel because all of a sudden [you’re under] that kind of champion scrutiny.

“And it’s really important how Arsenal are going to handle that, but Mikel Arteta has done a brilliant job, and he makes really big decisions and bold decisions. And it’s about how you handle that first hurt. It’s ironic that getting to the top is the easy thing, it really is.”

Elsewhere in the capital, Arsenal’s London rivals Chelsea endured a miserable league campaign last season, with Maresca’s replacement in the hotseat, Liam Rosenior, lasting little more than three months.

Their 10th-place finish means there will be no European football at Stamford Bridge this season for just the third time this century. In 16-17, it proved to be a blessing in disguise as Antonio Conte’s side romped to the title.

“I do remember Gary Cahill talking about Conte coming in to a Premier League team like Chelsea who [weren’t] in Europe,” said Hart. “He said they were so well drilled, he was so intense in what they needed. They almost had NFL playbooks and it allowed them the time to build into the season.

“So that’s a massive advantage for someone like Xabi Alonso, who’s obviously got his way of playing and he’ll have his time on the grass with his players. Their ceiling is, of course, to be in amongst it. I think it is. And they’ve got a really great opportunity.”