Chelsea have just three Premier League games left this season. The Blues are still playing to figure out which European competition they will end up in, but they’ve been mathematically eliminated from the title race for some time now.
The Blues are in 9th, an incredible 28 points behind Arsenal who top the table. Given our tricky remaining games (Liverpool, Tottenham and Sunderland), we could end up buried even deeper. Our recent form of six Premier League defeats in a row leads us to believe we might not pick up another point before the season is over.
That would potentially drop us far lower – there are four teams who could overtake us this weekend.
There is even a remote chance we end up in 16th, if Nottingham Forest ride the wave of confidence from beating us on Monday and win their final three games and we lose out.
It’s a quite incredible fall from grace. Most sites had us as fourth favourite to win the league, with an implied probability of about 11%. A glance at the Premier League odds for next season will soon show the Blues considered much bigger outsiders than that.
Even the appointment of a big name manager (no sure thing) isn’t going to help much. If we had a 10% chance fresh from beating PSG in the Club World Cup final, imagine what our odds could be after a car crash season where we finish 16th? A summer of enforced sales after missing out on the Champions League could hurt our chances even further.
Right now, no Blues fans are even thinking about the title. We have failed to even establish ourselves as a Champions League regular, and that needs to be the priority for this ownership.
In that way, missing out on Europe entirely might actually prove to be a boost. We’ve seen how it’s helped Manchester United this year, and if we get a good coach in place we could use next season to build some momentum and finally get a coherent team together without the distractions of midweek games.
So perhaps having a tricky run to end the season isn’t all bad? We can’t really face another year in the Conference League, and even the Europa League would be more trouble than it’s worth.
Whatever happens, it will be fascinating to check back in early August and see where we stand compared to a year before.
