Chelsea predicted to finish behind Brighton despite strong start to the season

Chelsea are set up for a good season after a start which saw them improve on last year’s equivalent fixtures.

With 7 games played in the Premier League, we’re approaching the point where you can look at the stats and start to draw some solid conclusions about which teams are doing well and which are going to struggle.

Chelsea are one of the sides who look to have improved significantly. Even having had a run of four games without a win, they have improved in a big way on their equivalent fixtures from last year.

As it stands, the Blues are up to fourth, and have 13 points. Over the course of the season, you can extrapolate that out to 70 points. That would have got them fourth place last year, in an increasingly level Premier League.

Chelsea predicted for fifth place finish despite strong start

Of course one usually only needs fifth place these days to make it into the Champions League. But we should be aiming higher, not lower.

If the attack keeps firing and the defence keeps up the improvements it showed in the last two games, 70 points will start to look like the bare minimum. Although stats site OPTA disagree. They think we’ll only have 60 points, and that Brighton will finish ahead of us. The next few games could swing that heavily, however.

In other news…

Chelsea kept a long awaited clean sheet on Saturday – and their manager spoke about how the team had worked on their defending.

Alonso has also been speaking about Pedro Neto and his improved form of late – the Spaniard denies he’s a wing back, however.