Chelsea face Aston Villa on Sunday, shortly before Liverpool take on Man City. If the Reds win and so do Chelsea, the Blues go second.
On the other hand, if Man City win and so do Chelsea, Enzo Maresca’s team will be just 6 points off league-leading Liverpool.
With that in mind – and given more than a quarter of the season has passed already, it’s hard to deny Chelsea are at least vaguely in the title race, right? Apparently not. Maresca has done just that in his press conference this afternoon. But we all know that’s just a manager being a manager: managing expectations as well as managing his team.
He’s not making it up entirely, either – as he likes to point out, Arsenal and Man City are better equipped for a title race because their coaches have been in place for a long time. Liverpool, while they have a new coach, have a team that’s effectively been built up for a decade. Chelsea are the opposite.
But what do the bookies make of Chelsea’s chances? If you were to look on Card Player’s list of casinos not on Gamstop for their odds on Chelsea’s final position, what would you find?
Well, most places have the Blues at 20/1 to win the title now. Before the season started, that was more like 17/1.
So clearly, the bookies agree with Maresca. But the fact that our odds have drifted slightly is far more to do with Liverpool’s form than our own. The Reds now have the biggest lead ever in the Premier League with 12 games played. Given that, the fact our odds have lengthened only a touch is actually evidence of how far ahead of expectations we are.
To put it another way: if those preseason odds factored in Liverpool’s record being won 10, drawn 1, lost 1, our starting point might have been 40/1, and we’d be talking about how we’d slashed that so dramatically with our own good start.
Maresca is right – the title is probably beyond us. But the aim this season was to get into the Champions League, and we look well placed to do that now. Wins against Aston Villa and Tottenham in the next few weeks would be a huge step towards that, given they’re among our rivals for the top 4.
We wonder what the manager will be saying a year from now? Keep up the impressive progress we’ve made since his arrival and surely even he won’t be able to deny we’re finally back in the mix for a title.
