Chelsea seemed to impress the whole world with their results last week.
It was a win and a draw, but beyond that the performances against Barcelona and Arsenal were of a standard which has convinced a lot of people (including Chelsea fans) that we will be a real contender this year.
A look at the bizbet app shows that our odds both for the Champions League and Premier League are continuing to get shorter as the season goes on, and those two games will have helped.
Against Barcelona we showed how effective we can be in Europe. The Catalan side are full of technical skill and brilliant ball players, but we simply blew them away. We were too strong, too fast, too committed and too tough for Hansi Flick’s team. A clever team selection from Enzo Maresca saw him pick a side built to take beat their high line on the counter and it worked perfectly, with all three of Estevao Willian, Pedro Neto and Alejandro Garnacho able to streak away at different times.
Arsenal on Sunday provided the total opposite challenge – they are prototypical Premier League team of the new era, a team of physical monsters who make dominating at set pieces their bread and butter. To make things worse, we went down to ten men and lost Moises Caicedo, one of our most combative players, before half time.
That was when Maresca’s team were able to show their mental fortitude. They dug deep and got stuck in to Mikel Arteta’s team with real menace. It looks like the Gunners weren’t used to people taking the fight to them. They suddenly became hesitant in the challenge and backed down from duels, especially in the middle of the park where Reece James ran riot.
The ultimate irony came when it was us who opened the scoring from a set piece, beating Arsenal at their own game. While they did eventually equalise, coming away from that game against the best team in Europe with a point in those circumstances was really impressive, and looks to have convinced bookies all over the world that we are a serious contender this season.
There’s a long way to go, but with Cole Palmer now ready to return to first team action, we could yet see those odds come in even more if we start racking up a run of wins.
