CHELSEA PREVIEW - TITLE DRIFT DANGER

HUGE CHANGE TO CLOSE THE GAP ON LUCK LIVERPOOL

The super-est of Sundays is upon us. An away day at a resurgent Chelsea against a team of young pretenders with a massive point to prove this season. Arsenal, with 3 points to gain in a title race that is looking very Liverpool-focused right now.

This is going to be a really difficult afternoon. Chelsea have found a manager who has injected joy into the football, wrangled a bloated squad, and has started to deliver some green shoots on the £1.3b investment. This season, for them, is where we’ll see if the Clearlake strategy of buying up the best of football over two years was totally mental or a stroke of genius for the ages.

One thing is clear - the banter era for Chelsea looks to be over. Don’t be sad about it, we had some fun at their expense.

The story of Arsenal at the moment is a familiar one at this time of year - we’ve not been very good, our luck has been low, the identity that was so fluent last season has hit the cattle guards. Can Arteta unjam an unbalanced team and send us down the Title Lane, or are we going to look like a bloated dairy queen stuck in the grates?

Do NOT ask me why I took you down an agricultural path there.

There are some selection issues ahead of the game, but I think Arteta might ride them out. If they can get Declan out, they’ll do it, and at worst, use an early exit as a reason to keep him in the country over the international break. Martin Odegaard isn’t going away with Norway. I’d guess the team has had two training sessions since the Inter game. If he came through them unscathed, don’t be shocked to see him thrown into the mixer.

Partey and Rice in midfield. Kai Havertz at left 8. Maybe Jesus given a start? Can’t see Leo getting a run-out after another Drossard start in the week.

Tactically, you’d imagine the message to the boys will be very similar to the one against Inter Milan. Chelsea is weak through the middle, and they don’t deal very well with aerial balls in the box. That’s meat and pork pie for the boys. I just hope that there’s something a little more refined on offer this time around on the ground and through the middle. They won’t be able to defend like Inter Milan, and the great thing about Enzo teams is they only really have one way of playing… so one would suspect they are going to have to go at us in front of their home crowd.

Without meaning to sound basic, I would suggest our main weakness has been self-harm. Our players have to accept that they are the opposite of special in the eyes of PGMOL, and we’re not going to get anything. Michael Oliver, fresh off ending EtH’s career, is back in charge for the 5th time against Arsenal in 2024, and he’ll be itching to prove that he doesn’t care about anything outside of being the star of the show. We cannot self-immolate. There can be no donut moments. Arsenal have to deliver an afternoon of squeaky-clean football. Remember, this is the guy who was freelancing in UAE during a Premier League season. Totally normal stuff.

There are going to be some interesting battles to keep an eye on. Cucurella got the better of Saka over the summer on the big stage. He loves Arsenal games, and he’s a real shitbag. I hope Bukayo has something a little extra for him.

Reece James is off the physio’s table - one would imagine he’ll be up against Martinelli, who has been fast losing the faith of the fans. At some point, we’re going to get an accidental great performance. It’s been a long time waiting, but remember, he burst onto the scene with some good times against Chelsea. He could fancy himself.

The midfield will also be interesting. Lavia and Caicedo were two targets of Arsenal. The ex-Brighton star is getting rave reviews this season, as is Lavia. It’ll be fun to watch them battle it out against Declan and a Thomas Partey on an absolute tear this season.

I was never a Nico Jackson hater. The uncultured among us mocked his misses, but if you have a PhD in strikers missing chances like I do, you’ll know that being in position to miss is a winning attribute in a young player. Nico has 6 goals and 3 assists in 10 games. He broke Drogba’s race to 20 PL goals. The boy is a chaos merchant who could cause trouble for a centre-back pairing that hasn’t been great this season.

Slight pivot:

I want to take a second to condemn the absolutely disgusting pogrom that happened after the Ajax game in the week. There’s no place in football for that sort of behavior, and there’s no justification for it. The ‘be kind’ crowd twisting themselves in knots to pretend that there’s any way this attack was acceptable for that sort of targeted violence, at this point, is not surprising, but it is depressing that condemnation has been muted, especially for sections of the football community that want to pin their virtue to every other cause.

Please do not use that paragraph to say gross things in the comments section. Violence in football is not political. It’s not hard to say it was wrong.

Let’s quickly talk about some of the things going on at our rivals:

Manchester City, the most well-funded club on the planet, with a wage bill roughly double the one at Arsenal… just lost their 4th away game in a row. This time, it was Brighton who turned them over.

Remember the conversation we’ve been having about Arsenal being too overreliant on Odegaard and that this is something we should have solved for? Here’s Manchester City, a team with endless pots of cash, and they cannot adapt to Rodri being out for the season.

Why aren’t their fans complaining about transfers?

Oh right. It’s a thing. I see.

There is a very simple concept in football called ‘your best players are important and that is why they earn the big pound notes’ and when those players are not there, it’s very, very hard to ride out long periods of action.

It shouldn’t take a City collapse for us to realise Martin Odegaard being out for 9 weeks was going to be difficult to absorb. But here we are.

Now let’s talk about Liverpool. They have had an incredible run. This is from Opta Joe:

28 - Only in 2019-20 (31) have Liverpool collected more points after 11 games of a Premier League season than their 28 in 2024-25, while no manager has ever won more points from their first 11 games in the competition than Arne Slot (Guus Hiddink, also 28 at Chelsea). Flying.

Some things to consider here:

• Their fixtures have been very favorable.

• They’ve had minimal injuries to key players.

• All the luck is rolling their way at the moment.

  • You only know this if you’ve watched them extensively. Go watch that Villa game and tell me they looked like title challengers.

• Dependency on three players who are leaving

The problem with going on a tear like this when you’re a new manager is that when things start to go wrong, like Trent getting injured today, they can spiral pretty hard.

“We’ve got out ______ back”

Slot has taken over an incredible team. They are winners. Those winners were 5 points clear of Arsenal in February last season, and they finished 7 behind us. That was under the management of Klopp, in his final season, with the entire media establishment pumping the dream.

The juice is not going to last this season. When it unravels, like it did last year, it’ll unravel fast. The difference this season? No Klopp. Three of their best players will have their heads on golden handshakes in sunnier climes. Then you’ll see their fans cooking Liverpool for a limp summer of limited activity.

If I could wrap a broader point about all three clubs here - the easiest answer to any football problem is recruitment. By the time we get to March, the top three clubs will all have been savaged by their fans for the same thing. Can’t all be right, can they?

Should City have someone as good as Rodri as a backup? Is there a scenario where Arsenal could present title-challenging backup to Odegaard? If Salah drops out of Liverpool, who thinks it’ll be business as usual for them? Surviving setbacks perfectly is always the goal - but the truth is, losing your best players for extended periods of time is always going to hurt, and it’ll always be a mitigating circumstance, even for a team as rich as City.

Ok, that’s all I’ve got.

Check out our bonus podcast with Anthony Mellor who is a Chelsea fan. x