Chelsea’s run-in means fans can’t let go of European hopes yet – Talk Chelsea

This is a Chelsea season we just can’t quite work out.

Last season was easy – the worst thing happened at any possible moment, all year long.

This season is more complicated. It lures you in with a couple of moments of promise, then throws you right back to the depths of a year ago.

Every time we string two good performances together, we then follow it with a couple of dreadful ones. Mauricio Pochettino swings back and forth, in and out of the fans’ good books.

Far too many times we’ve called a good result a turning point. There’s just no predicting a team that can be humiliated at home by Wolves then head to Birmingham days later to play a superb game and crush Aston Villa in one of their biggest games of the season.

So betting on the Blues, even with new-zealand offers with bet365, is a risky business. How do you even predict the next game, let alone the rest of the season?

Well, we’re eternal optimists, and with Christopher Nkunku fit and Nicolas Jackson back in the squad, we fancy us to finish the season better than the bookies might expect.

The next couple of months aren’t easy, but we can scrape a few results. We’ve played well in some of our games against top sides this season, and in the coming weeks we face our reverse fixtures against Man City, Newcastle, Arsenal, Man U and Spurs.

Then the run up to the conclusion of the season is very nice – in reverse order, it’s Bournemouth, Nottingham Forest, West Ham, Villa, Brighton, Everton, Sheffield United. Plenty of those teams will have little to play for in the final weeks of the season, with relegation looking pretty certain for some and mid-table mediocrity guaranteed for others.

Those are 7 very winnable games, to close out the campaign. Now we really are getting overexcited, but just imagine if we find our form over the next two months and fly into that run with a lot of confidence (and perhaps even Reece James back and fit). Could you rule out a run of 5 or 6 wins from those 7 games? We could find ourselves catapulted up the table just when it matters most.

Still, before we start worrying about that, we’ve got to get through these next few weeks. The way this last 18 months have gone, would anyone be that shocked if we lose 5 in a row and end up right back in the hell spiral we’ve been trying to scramble out of?