The worrying graph which shows Chelsea may already have blown Champions League chances | OneFootball

The Athletic have run the numbers looking at Chelsea’s fixtures for the remainder of the season, and it doesn’t look good.

The Blues dropped 4 points from winning positions against Leeds and Burnley in their last two games, and it’s looking ominously like those points could cost them a Champions League place.

There are still a lot of games to go, and a lot of scope to change things. But the crucial information is that the Blues have the hardest remaining fixtures of anyone in the league.

OPTA rankings show Chelsea have hardest fixtures in the league to come

OPTA’s remaining fixture difficulty as published in the Athletic.

According to the OPTA “power rankings” of teams we’ve got to face, we have a mean opponent difficulty of 94. Our rivals Man U have 92.9, Liverpool 92.1, Aston Villa 91.8.

We face all three of them in the eleven remaining games. So our future is very much in our hands. But our soft run is over, and there are no easy points left to win. After facing table topping Arsenal on Sunday, we travel to face Villa away. After that come Newcastle, Everton, Man City, Man U, Brighton, relegation battling Nottingham Forest, Liverpool, Spurs and finally Sunderland to close the season out.

The most hopeful thing we can take from all that is that Sunderland are not in relegation trouble, and will hopefully be on the beach on the final day. We’ve just got to make sure we stay in the fight until then…

In other news…

John Terry was frustrated he wasn’t considered as a caretaker option for Chelsea when Enzo Maresca left his job earlier this year.

Another pundit has been speaking about the potential of Cole Palmer leaving Chelsea, and says that they club would consider selling anyone at the right price.

Check out the latest edition of Simon Phillips’ SPTC podcast here: