What the stats say about a potential Chelsea title challenge next season | OneFootball

Enzo Maresca has largely denied all year that he was told to get into the Champions League places this season. He has maintained that his only objective was to challenge for those places, so even failing to reach them would still be a success, as his team have spent the whole season there or thereabouts.

Maresca on Chelsea’s timeline for title challenge

But what about beyond that? What are the medium and long term objectives given to him by the club? The best answer we’ve got came in a Sky Sports interview the coach gave back in January, which Simon Johnson cites in his Athletic piece today about the Blues trying to forge a first title race since 2017.

“The plan with the club, the schedule that you try to do at the beginning of the season or when we met for the first time, was for the second season to go for the top four, and then after the second season, try to compete for the title. This is the reason why I said many times we are ahead of my expectations because we spent almost the whole season in the top four, and this shows how far ahead we are in terms of expectations.”

Chelsea set to take step closer to top this season

Chelsea celebrate Liverpool win. (Photo by Shaun Botterill/Getty Images)

So in fact there he’s saying he wasn’t expected to “go for” the top four until his second season. Then, a title challenge would come in his third.

How set up are we for that? We’ve finished an average of 27.4 points behind the first placed team since the years since our last title. Right now we’re 19 off, and have plenty still to play for while Liverpool could yet drop more points. So there’s no denying we’ll close the gap.

Can we make another jump next year? With the right singings, it’s perfectly possible.