Chelsea went into the Carabao Cup semi final second leg against Arsenal at the start of February with a lot of hope.
The Blues were on a winning run under new manager Liam Rosenior. He had navigated them to the Champions League knockouts and had them in great form in the league. The Gunners were slowing down, and many people gave the Blues a good chance to overcome the one goal deficit on aggregate.
If you were checking Chelsea’s Champions League qualification odds on Angliabet at that moment, you’d have seen them highly favoured, especially with Liverpool and Man U struggling.
Even losing the second leg 1-0 at the Emirates didn’t feel like a disaster, given Mikel Arteta’s team’s strength. But since then, the wheels have really come off our season. That defeat was followed by a morale boosting win over Wolves, but draws with Burnley and Leeds after that failed to capitalise on that.
The Gunners then beat us in the league, which was followed by our last league win, against Aston Villa at the start of this month. Since then we were lucky to get past Championship Wrexham in the FA Cup, before losing to PSG (twice) Newcastle and Everton.
A wobble that began with those draws against relegation candidates has now turned into a full on collapse, and we’re not sure how the team get out of it. They’re physically exhausted and seem to be surrendering games before a ball is kicked.
There’s a lot of speculation they’re not happy with the new manager, and they’re certainly not happy about the decision to get rid of his predecessor. We’ve seen a few of these spirals in recent years, and we fear this one could end like the dreadful 2022/2023 season where we won once in the last 11 games.
The worst part is, Rosenior has used up his easy games. We close the season out with games against Man City, Man United, Brighton, relegation threatened Nottingham Forest, Liverpool, Spurs and Sunderland.
If the spiral continues, there’s nothing stopping us finishing as low as 2023’s 12th place. We currently have a 6 point lead over Newcastle in 12th, and given our fixtures, could easily lose that cushion in the space of a few games.
There is the respite of an FA Cup game against Port Vale up next, but the double header against the Manchester sides after that could leave us 4 league games without a win if things continue to spiral.
