We’re 2/3rds of the way through the season and Chelsea find themselves in 10th place. They’re still miles off the top, but not miles off the European places.
The Champions League looks a long shot. Everything you check, whether it’s a comparator of betting sites in Uganda or a local bookies, will say the same thing: Chelsea are 8th in the rankings for team’s most likely to finish in the top 4.
The numbers have them at around 33/1 to make the top 4. That’s no surprise really. It would require not only a monster run of form from the Blues, it would also multiple teams ahead of us to really start to collapse.
It feels perfectly possible, that Aston Villa or Spurs, or Man U, or Brighton, or Newcastle, or West Ham collapse. But all of them? Villa are on 49 points and we’re on 35. We’d need to do extremely well to catch them, and even then we’d be relying on none of those other sides outperforming us in that period.
So instead of looking to the Champions League, we should just be focused on 7th place, which will get us into the Europa Conference League.
That gives us at least some European football next season. That hurts our league progress of course, but it’s good for us to get into the habit of playing twice a week. It’s not like having one game a week has actually helped us this season, either in injuries or in terms of form.
It won’t really help us to attract bigger name players, but it does give the manager a whole bunch of extra game against weaker teams which he can use to give youngsters and squad players a chance.
We should be looking to reshape the squad even further this summer, and by then Pochettino should have a grip on the academy players he likes too. Next season’s conference league journey – should we make it there – could be a really exciting one in terms of seeing youngsters and talents who might otherwise go on loan.
It’s not the most glamorous competition out there, but we’d still love to see us back in Europe in some form. These empty midweeks just feel wrong. Who’s up for a trip to Bratislava or Vilnius? We certainly are – if we get to see some Cobham talents along the way, even better.
So here’s hoping this last 33% of the season is a good one.
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