Episode 250 “Chelsea: September in Review”

And I'll be honest, Daniel, looking at the Premier League and yes, obviously, you know, Brighton has sort of had a very good start to the season and they sit, you know, they sit high up.

But if we talk about sort of the traditional teams that we would sort of expect to sort of be seeing sort of in the mix, you know, I mean, yes, Man City have looked good so far.

Caveat of the news that broke on Friday, which we will maybe touch on in a sec afterwards.

Arsenal looked pretty good prior to that sort of result at Brighton and said Brighton have got Europe this season.

We know the brand also tended to start seasons relatively well.

And then they have periods where they sort of fade a bit.

Brentford have had a decent start, two wins and three draws, etc.

Leeds have had a decent start.

But if we're talking about, I guess, traditional size, Liverpool, Daniel, not the most convincing so far.

OK, a bit maybe of defensive solidity for them.

Recently, Man United haven't looked very good.

And, you know, Villa, maybe, you know, they've got that first sort of result there against Spurs, but haven't necessarily looked too amazing.

They've been gutted in the summer and obviously Spurs are Spurs.

We don't really need to mention them in the conversation for top six at this point.

So I guess I look at Chelsea and I still, despite us being a 10th, I don't see any reason why Chelsea shouldn't be able to qualify for the Champions League based on what I've seen really from others.

At this point in the season, yes, there are teams performing better than us.

But out of the, you know, Man City and Arsenal, I would expect to finish above Chelsea, subject to if Manchester City, whatever happens with the punishment for their breaches, etc.

So I guess, Dan, are you kind of looking at it, despite, you know, the flaws we've talked about Chelsea, I still feel that Chelsea this season should be getting Champions League football.

I mean, like I said, we have not really seen this season.

Marco Palestra, who you feel is going to be a player pretty instrumental to Xabi Alonso's system, based on what we saw in pre-season.

He's not been... around to play yet and just given you know the frailties of others there just do there does seem to be all the other sides do seem to be pretty frail like that I mean you know unfortunately I don't think Arsenal for example if say City get points deducted or whatever probably don't need to be that great to win the title

yeah

this is I don't think the standard to get Champions League feels like super super high but this season, it probably, again, feels probably similar to conversations we had last year.

You don't need to be that good to get Champions League.

And obviously Chelsea just were not good enough regardless.