“Chelsea trying to convince themselves they’re onto a good thing” – Blues “project” slammed by journalist | OneFootball

The perception of Chelsea’s season by fans and by pundits has been all over the place since August.

Nobody was really sure what to expect coming into this season, and predictions about our finishing place were wildly different depending on where you looked.

Then a strong start made most outsiders accept that we had finally started to come together into a real team. There was no doubt at that point that we would struggle for a top 5 place – the focus was more on how long we could sustain a title race for. But a post-Christmas collapse combined with a nasty final run of games has totally thrown things out of whack again.

The Athletic’s piece on the run in had Oliver Kay absolutely savaging the whole project. According to him, we’ve got more to prove than anyone else:

“In a way, it’s Chelsea [with the most to prove in the run in]. Everyone at Manchester City accepts they’ve had a bad season. Everyone at Manchester United accepts they have a massive rebuilding job to do. But people at Chelsea are still trying to convince themselves and the world that they’re onto a good thing,” Kay wrote.

Chelsea have convinced themselves top 6 would be acceptable progress

OPTA table predicts Chelsea to finish 6th.

It’s harsh, but probably pretty true. The excuses about a young team and a new project have been repeated so often that it’s become acceptable to finish 6th despite the billion spent in 3 years. Does that mean finishing 5th next year would be OK? Or 4th in two years? Standards are “on the floor”, as they say.

The odds are now against us making the top 5. That should have been seen as unacceptable in the summer, and certainly should have been seen as unacceptable when we were sitting in second place at Christmas.