Not many people predicted Chelsea to be among the teams challenging for the title this season, but Enzo Maresca's men are just four points off top spot a fortnight from Christmas — albeit having played a game more than Liverpool — and haven't lost since their trip to Anfield in October.
The Blues showed impressive mental resilience to bounce back from going two goals down against Spurs on Sunday, eventually emerging as 4-2 victors, yet a comment made by Jamie Carragher brought Chelsea's impressive form back into perspective.
Speaking on Sky Sports, Carragher said: “This Chelsea team is no underdog story. This is a team that has spent £1.2bn but what they’re doing this season is something totally unexpected. This club are right in the mix for a title challenge.”
Chelsea has been spending big for two decades, but the £1.2bn that Carragher referred to is the amount the club has spent on new signings since a Todd Boehly-led consortium completed its takeover of the Stamford Bridge club in 2022.
Liverpool, meanwhile, has spent a fraction of that amount of money on new players over the last two and a half years, which underlines just how good a job Arne Slot is doing at Anfield. Slot barely welcomed any new faces to the club during his first summer in charge, with Federico Chiesa the sole arrival — and he's barely even played.
The Dutchman is effectively operating with the same squad that Jurgen Klopp had at his disposal last term, which makes Liverpool's form during the opening few months of the season all the more remarkable. Less than 40 miles east of Anfield, it is being suggested that Manchester United will have to wait until Ruben Amorim has assembled his own squad before the team has any chance of achieving success again.
It could be argued — and many probably would argue — that Slot inherited a far better group of players than Amorim did but the gap in quality of the two sets of players, while clearly significant, isn't quite as wide as the performances of the two teams would suggest.
That just goes to show just what a special manager Liverpool has in Slot, and the longer the Reds' fine run goes on this season, the less likely Chelsea's underdog story is to have a happy ending.