Chelsea look like early title contenders and can win the Premier League thanks to Eden Hazard, Europa League football and lack of competition
With Blues flying high at top of the table, we take a look at five reasons why they can go all the way this season
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WITH the 2018 Premier League now over a month old, the table is beginning to take shape.
By the time European football comes around, the dust begins to settle and league positions take on a familiar feel.
Chelsea, as we would have hoped if not expected, have been punching at the top since day one with five wins in five.
Not to get too carried away, but it looks as if we really CAN win the league this season. And here’s five reasons why...
No Expectations
Possibly the most important of all reasons, there is absolutely no expectation on the manager, group of players or club as a whole to win the Premier League this season.
After missing out on top four last year - a mammoth 30 points behind Manchester City - this was always going to be a rebuilding year.
A change of style, identity, new manager and players, and usually that all takes time.
Ideas take time to bed in, squads take a season or two to make your own. See Klopp, Guardiola and Pochettino as prime examples.
At best our pre-season goal would have been to make the top four this season – no-one, not even the most ardent supporter, was talking about the title.
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Primo Anno Italiano
Football has a strange way of repeating cycles - thing that happen, will happen again.
This is how clubs get bogey teams, players love playing against certain opponents, Arsenal fall apart every time spring breaks, and we seem to like winning the league with managers in their first season. Especially Italian ones.
European Competition
For many, not being in the Champions League is a major problem, but this season it could actually be a blessing in disguise for us.
I expect Maurizio Sarri will use the early stages of the competition to give game time to those not playing regular first-team football.
Cesc Fabregas, Davide Zappacosta and Andreas Christensen all featured against PAOK last night, while Ruben Loftus-Cheek made the bench.
This not only allows key players to rest, but will sharpen up the squad for domestic competitions.
It also gives Sarri more time to get his message and style drummed into the fringe players.
Not only will they have training ground experience, their relative match fitness should also mean they could step into an injured first teamer's place a lot better than if they’d hardly played at all.
The Opposition
Any one of us who has experienced Jose Mourinho in a third season, as Chelsea have done twice, will have written Manchester United off at the start of the season.
Arsenal, well they’ve kind of ruled themselves out over the past few years leaving Spurs and Liverpool as our main rivals for what everyone assumes is Manchester City’s crown.
Tottenham do not look up for the task this season.
Mauricio Pochettino's side have signed no-one and are carrying a leggy striker, while still trying to finish their new home in time for Christmas.
This leaves only our good friends from Merseyside as the ones who will apparently run the marathon closest to City.
This is Liverpool though, and despite the constant stream of ‘best club in the world’ we’ve all heard since the 1990s (with not much apart from a jammy European Cup to show for it) many of them do believe this will be the season they finally do it, or come second at least.
Liverpool have great players and a great team.
But it’s just that experience tells, and they sadly (for them) don’t have enough of it, and so I feel that they’ll yet again slip at the critical moment.
Eden Hazard
At last we have a manager who looks like he can get the very best out of Eden Hazard.
No disrespect to our previous management, but the style of play employed by both Antonio Conte and Mourinho before him were at best reserved and hard working.
Hazard had to do a lot of work in his own half, defending, covering and generally expending energy off the ball.
Now, under Sarri, he has license to stay forward and to roam, to utilise his skills and talents to hurt the opposition, not to stop them hurting us.
Sarri said he wants to see Hazard in the last 25 per cent of the pitch doing damage, and that he expects him to be able to score 40 goals this season.
He also said that Hazard is the best player in the world, and on current form, it’s hard to argue.
If Sarri and Hazard can keep it up, then it’s going to be hard to argue that Chelsea are not a major player in this seasons Premier League.
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