Chelsea to struggle to reach “main goal” set by top pundit on TV | OneFootball

After a run of wins, it only takes one stinging defeat to burst a bubble and put everyone back down to earth, questioning where this Chelsea team are going.

Chelsea to struggle for “main goal” set by Cole

Wilson Isidor celebrates scoring for Sunderland. (Photo by Clive Mason/Getty Images)

One person who remains relentlessly positive is Joe Cole, who has always maintained he’s a big fan of Enzo Maresca and the job he’s doing at Chelsea.

“It’s strange, but they are where I expected them to be, competing to get back into the Champions League,” Cole said when asked by TNT Sport to take a big picture look at the season so far.

He could have spun far more negative, but he always puts appropriate context around the results:

“Hopefully they’ll qualify more comfortably than they did last year, when they scraped in. They won the Conference League, which, for a club the size of Chelsea, being in that competition, is a bit of an anomaly.

“It was fantastic for the young players, which we hope helps them kick on, and then the Club World Cup was another bit of an anomaly. Obviously, it was fantastic to win it, but we still don’t really know where we’re going to go with this trophy.

“The main goal this season has to be qualifying again for the Champions League, but with a bit more space to those beneath them.”

Well it’s not looking good on that front – we’re doing worse than the equivalent fixtures last year, and the underlying numbers aren’t pretty. As it stands, we’re not going to improve on last year at all.

In other news…

With the promise of a big step up this season fading fast there has been talk about manager Enzo Maresca leaving – and the departure of Igor Tudor from Juventus this morning has only accelerated that. Could we see a Sarri-like handshake deal?

Chelsea will play the tenth game of their Premier League season on Sunday when they take on Spurs – and it’s not looking pretty. Things are trending in the wrong direction for Enzo Maresca’s team, looking at the stats.