It’s the identical story yearly today – we anticipate Chelsea to compete in a title race, however by March it’s truly become a battle for the Champions League locations.
This yr was alleged to be so totally different. Two of our high rivals for the highest 5 had dreadful begins to the season. Manchester United sacked Ruben Amorim, and Liverpool spent half the season genuinely trying like they may sack Arne Slot.
In the meantime, Tottenham are genuinely vulnerable to relegation.
With all that in thoughts, it ought to have been plain crusing to qualify for Champions League soccer. In November, it felt like issues must go significantly unsuitable for us to overlook out. Nicely, they’ve gone significantly unsuitable. Enzo Maresca was sacked, and after an preliminary bump underneath Liam Rosenior, Chelsea’s newest outcomes have been poor.
Since beating West Ham on the finish of January, a second the place we have been trying above us within the desk on the high 2, not down, there’s been a droop. We’ve misplaced to Newcastle and Arsenal, drawn with Leeds and Burnley, and solely overwhelmed Wolves and Aston Villa.
The actual fact we’ve been overwhelmed an extra 4 occasions within the Champions League and Carabao Cup in that point solely provides to the sense that issues are going horribly unsuitable.
Chelsea’s stats in that interval have proven the place the issues are. We’re conceding too many targets, with only one clear sheet since late January. Joao Pedro’s scorching streak stored us scoring, however not that’s died away we actually look missing up entrance too.
A crew low on confidence and working out of gasoline is now stumbling in direction of the ending line, and it gained’t take a lot to complete us off. Lose to Everton on Saturday night time and it would already be over.
All we are able to do is go sport by sport. We have to get 3 factors by any means needed, then dig in for a nasty double header towards Man U and Man Metropolis in April.
By the tip of that United sport on the 18th of April we are going to seemingly definitively know if our high 5 chase is useless or alive. However even when we’re nonetheless within the race, will probably be removed from over. A sport towards Liverpool in Might will then turn into the main focus.
For as a lot as we’d prefer to be comfortably positioned and looking forward to Europe subsequent yr, there’s no denying it’s thrilling to have every little thing on the road with 8 video games to go.
