Jamie Carragher believes that Chelsea are ‘right in the race’ for the Premier League title this term along with Liverpool, and he cited a previous Reds team as a comparison to explain why.
Manchester City and Arsenal began the campaign as many pundits’ only two contenders for the trophy, but with the midway point rapidly approaching, it’s Arne Slot and Enzo Maresca who’ve guided their teams to first and second respectively in what for both of them is their debut season as a Premier League head coach.
Both sides also have 100% records in Europe, but whereas the Merseysiders have achieved that in the Champions League, the Blues have had the luxury of easing through the Conference League with what’s effectively a wholly different line-up from their usual top-flight XI.
Carragher points to big benefit for Chelsea
Speaking on Monday Night Football on Sky Sports, Carragher thinks that the scope for Maresca to keep his crucial players fresh gives them every chance in the title race, akin to when Liverpool used the lack of European football in 2013/14 to their advantage by surprisingly pushing Man City all the way that season.
The former Reds defender said of Chelsea: “I still look at them and I don’t see a title-winning team in there, when I look at the goalkeeper and the two centre-backs.
“I know Liverpool didn’t win the league but, if you remember the season under Brendan Rodgers when they came really close, they came from nowhere. No-one expected it, but they didn’t have European football.
“I know Chelsea do, but they can put their second team out and probably still win that competition, so in some ways they haven’t got European football if you know what I mean with the starting XI. That is something that definitely puts them right in the race.”
Chelsea have been able to rotate with freedom for the Conference League
(Photo by Alex Grimm/Getty Images)
Can Chelsea keep it up for the whole season, though?
Whereas Slot has had to field his strongest XI in the Champions League so far, Maresca has been able to make wholesale changes in Europe and still see Chelsea breeze through a competition which, in all honesty, hasn’t truly tested them so far.
There seems little doubt that such an advantage has partly contributed towards a run of five successive Premier League wins, with a nine-point deficit to Liverpool a fortnight ago now trimmed to just two, and they’d temporarily go top if they beat Everton on Sunday as the Reds don’t play until that evening.
In 2013/14, we had no European commitments and exited both domestic cups relatively early, which meant that we played just 43 matches in total that season.
Rodgers didn’t have a particularly deep squad either – certainly not in comparison to the current Blues crop – so the ability to focus almost entirely on the top flight was definitely a benefit, even if we came up agonisingly short in the title race run-in that year.
It’d be disingenuous to say that Chelsea’s excellent form is purely down to Maresca’s scope for rotation and the relative comfort of Conference League football, but the closer they get to the final and the stronger the opposition they face, the likelier they are to have a full-strength starting XI.
From Liverpool’s point of view, the key is to stay ahead of the west Londoners over the festive period and pounce on any stumbles they have in the Premier League, something that they’ve done to us in the past couple of weeks.