Wisdom held that this would be a transitional year for Chelsea.
They had lost their talismanic megastar and they were under a transfer ban which significantly exacerbated the already mighty challenge faced by Frank Lampard, his management career still in its infancy.
Even Burnley's matchday programme on Saturday noted that prevailing expectation.
But the Blues are tearing-up the script page-by-page.
Building momentum
The emphatic victory at Turf Moor continued the mounting charge of a team which has really hit its stride following a baptism of fire.
Since the Premier League season resumed following its first international break, Chelsea have picked up more points than reigning champions Manchester City and, provided they beat Tottenham Hotspur on Sunday, only one fewer than Liverpool, who could easily have dropped points at Stamford Bridge.
Looking beyond the impressive points tally, you see a fast-tracked footballing maturation and the emergence, game-on-game, of new strings to their bow.
They have blown teams away on occasion, but this week, they had also shown their capacity to grind out results (against Newcastle United) and to execute an all-important continental smash-and-grab.
Against Burnley, there were more signs of progress. Not only did Lampard's men brush off any lingering fatigue following their trip to Amsterdam in what the manager described as the toughest physical test of the season, but they also coolly reasserted themselves amid a Clarets onslaught.
Burnley pushed fiercely for an equaliser immediately after the first part of a Christian Pulisic trilogy but, led by Jorginho, Chelsea were soon able to put together the kind of assured spell of possession which could take the sting out of any game.
When Pulisic struck again moments before the break, it felt like game over.
Observers may point to the concession of two late goals as evidence of enduring defensive frailty (their record of 16 goals shipped is the poorest in the top half of the division) but there was little they could do about either Jay Rodriguez's wondergoal or Dwight McNeil's deflected effort.
Besides, if and when N'Golo Kante, the world's best defensive midfielder, shrugs off this succession of injuries, their tally of clean sheets is bound to improve.
The bigger picture
At this very moment, it's difficult to look past Chelsea for a top-four spot, in part because of their evident strengths but also their rivals' debilitating weaknesses.
Arsenal continue to buckle on their travels, Manchester United are lingering in the bottom half with little sense of an upward trajectory and Spurs appear to have hit their ceiling under Mauricio Pochettino and landed pretty hard on the ground.
If they do indeed secure Champions League football, it'd be easy to overstate the achievement. After all, Lampard does have an excellent squad at his disposal with an enviable strength-in-depth, as illustrated by Pulisic's starring display after a spell on the substitutes' bench.
But what he's done so well, and what he'll deservedly be commended for after the failure of his predecessors, is unlock its potential. A dazzling array of young talents are thriving under his tutelage, and gleefully seizing their long-awaited opportunities.
There will be difficult spells this season but there's no doubt the future looks bright and, more broadly, that it's an exciting time to be a Chelsea fan.