Ignore the doom-mongers and the talk of a jaded team battling negative thoughts following painful cup defeats and below-par performances, the Premier League title is within grasp.
Chelsea have been top of the league since the first weekend of the season, have a six-point lead and a game in hand. We’ve only lost three games all season in all competitions.
Blues fans ought to be super-confident of winning the title but instead there is a sense of worry for many.
Why should that be?
There is no denying performances lately haven’t been as impressive as earlier in the season. Nor have results, with dropped points against Burnley and Southampton and disappointing cup exits.
Diego Costa is scoring his goals in ones rather than twos and threes, Cesc Fabregas isn’t dictating games like he did in the first half of the season and the right side of the defence looks shakier than usual.
So could the relatively unthinkable happen and Chelsea blow the title to one of the three teams suddenly grouped up together behind us?
No.
Yes, we’ve dropped points. But you don’t have to win every game to win the league. You just need to get more points than anyone else – and all the signs are that we will.
Chelsea can drop eight points in their final nine matches and still be guaranteed the title, even if those behind us win every single game. That’s a massive cushion.
We could draw four games and still be fine. Or lose to Man United and Arsenal, draw with Liverpool and still be fine if we won every other game. And if our opponents drop points – which they probably will – we’ll have even more of a safety net.
Manchester City have already dropped more points this season than last season and already dropped more points in the second half of the season than the first.
And what about the dips in performances? Are they really a massive cause for concern or is it just that the likes of Diego Costa, Cesc Fabregas and Branislav Ivanovic were so fantastic earlier in the season that a small dip shows up so much and they’re actually still playing pretty well?
One man who hasn’t seemed to lose form at all is Eden Hazard, who has been the best player in the Premier League all season. But perversely his excellence could be costing Chelsea in one way, because the players seem to rely on him so much that maybe too much is going through him now, making it obvious for opposition defences to focus on him.
But that possible negative is vastly outweighed by having a truly world-class player in our team, making and scoring goals.
Our next two games are against Stoke and QPR. No guarantees, because Stoke aren’t bad and QPR are fighting to stay up, but we should win them. So by then we’d still have that eight-point safety net, with only seven games left.
Show me a team that wouldn’t settle for that.
Relax, everyone. Chelsea are going to win the league. Or at least we certainly should do.
James Clarke is the author of Moody Blues: Following the second-best team in Europe
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This post was last modified on 01/04/2015