Chelsea have shot up to second in the Premier League and battered Barcelona in Europe on Tuesday. Could they upset the odds and win either competition?
Over the last few years, Chelsea have been fairly widely mocked for their approach to getting back into the conversation at the top of the game’s biggest competitions.
That approach has, from afar, looked something like this: stockpile young players with vast potential and sign them up to long contracts to spread the cost in their books over excessively long periods. Then, keep signing players until enough of them come good, and accept big losses on any that do not work out.
“The blue billion-pound bottle jobs” was Gary Neville’s famous line about Chelsea after they lost the EFL Cup final last year to a weakened Liverpool. Given how much they had spent – more than £1bn in less than two years under Todd Boehly at the time, hence Neville’s infamous line – they were an easy target. Chelsea finished that season sixth in the Premier League and trophyless. To many, it looked like Boehly had wasted a hell of a lot of money to build not very much of note.
There was progress last season after Enzo Maresca came in, as they finished fourth and won the UEFA Conference League, but Chelsea still looked a long way off being ready to challenge for the game’s biggest honours despite spending vast quantities more.
In truth, even after they won the first version of the expanded FIFA Club World Cup in the summer, few would have argued that triumph was proof of their status as one of the best teams in the world. They had beaten European champions Paris Saint-Germain convincingly in the final, but they lost to Brazilian side Flamengo in the group stage and enjoyed a favourable run to the final.
A stuttering start to the 2025-26 Premier League season, which included draws with Crystal Palace and Brentford and defeats to Manchester United and Brighton, alongside a convincing defeat at Bayern Munich in the Champions League, confirmed to CWC doubters that Chelsea’s trophy had been a red herring.
But slowly, over the last couple of months, Chelsea appear to have grown. Many of those young players look like they are developing into the players the club’s scouts predicted they would, and the team’s potential suddenly looks vast.
There have been a couple of hiccups – in defeat at home to Sunderland and a 2-2 draw at Qarabag in the Champions League – but Chelsea have gone on a run of nine wins in their last 11 games in all competitions. They are now looking like a considerable force that shouldn’t be ignored and could be competitive on several fronts. Tuesday night’s comprehensive 3-0 win over Barcelona served as definitive proof that they could compete in Europe this season.
Chelsea were exceptional from start to finish. But for a spurned Ferran Torres chance on five minutes, Barcelona posed next to no attacking threat while Chelsea were absolutely relentless. As well as scoring three goals to record their biggest ever win over Barça, they had the ball in the back of the net another three times for goals that were disallowed. The scoreboard arguably flattered the visitors, and the stats didn’t truly reflect Chelsea’s dominance, either, as those chalked-off goals didn’t contribute to the numbers.
Ronald Araujo’s first-half red card made Chelsea’s job simpler, but for the 44 minutes when it was 11 vs 11, the hosts were the far better side. They were utterly dominant against a giant of European football and fully deserved their win. That result took them above Barcelona and up to sixth favourites to win the Champions League this season according to the Opta supercomputer, which gives them a 5.5% chance of glory.
This was an unthinkable situation only a few weeks ago, but now, Chelsea look like genuine contenders. They are no strangers to unlikely European glory, after all, having won the Champions League in 2012 and 2021 when finishing sixth and fourth in the Premier League, or in other words, when they were nowhere near the best team in Europe. Following the win over Barcelona, there’ll certainly be a few fans who remember those two triumphs well and are now dreaming of more glory.
And if their recent improvement is anything to go by, they could well get even better. They have named the youngest starting XIs on average in both the Champions League (23 years, 334 days) and the Premier League this season (24 years, 169 days).
Chelsea lineup vs Barcelona
Attackers like Pedro Neto (25 years old), Alejandro Garnacho (21), Jamie Gittens (21), Liam Delap (22) – who scored his first Champions League goal on Tuesday – and teen sensation Estêvão (18) all appear to be getting better, seemingly now settled in at Stamford Bridge.
In midfield, the club’s two most expensive signings, Enzo Fernández and Moisés Caicedo, are both looking like world-beaters. No Chelsea player has been involved in more goals in all competitions since the Club World Cup than Fernández (seven), who had two goals disallowed on Tuesday, while Caicedo is staking a reasonable claim as the best ball-winning midfielder on the planet.
Meanwhile, the leadership of players like Reece James and Marc Cucurella, who have been at the club a little longer than most, is proving invaluable.
It’s worth mentioning that with so much youth comes some unavoidable inconsistency, hence those aforementioned hiccups. That probably makes a title challenge to the unrelenting and reliable winning machine that is Arsenal, who have finished second for the last three seasons in a row, pretty unlikely.
Nonetheless, now second in the table following Saturday’s comfortable 2-0 win at Burnley, they have overtaken Liverpool in the title race according to the supercomputer, which now rates their chances of Premier League glory at 5.1% – around half the likelihood of Manchester City but more than twice as likely as Liverpool. It’s far from likely, but given the depth they now boast, their recent form and their current league position, a charge at the title is a possibility.
Premier League Opta supercomputer predictions
That depth has been particularly impressive in light of Cole Palmer, by far their best and most important player for the last two seasons, missing much of this season with a groin strain and then a toe injury suffered in a freak accident at home. The news that he is back in training will only strengthen Chelsea’s chances of winning something major this season. That said, given everyone else’s form, it’s not entirely clear where Palmer fits into this team, or who drops out.
On Saturday, Chelsea face Arsenal in a top-of-the-table clash that they probably need to win if they are to remain in the conversation for the Premier League title, and there’s absolutely no guarantees about that happening. They haven’t beaten Arsenal since August 2021.
The Champions League might instead feel like the more realistic competition for Chelsea. They don’t need to be the best team involved to win it, and they know, after beating PSG in the summer and battering Barcelona this week, that they can win one-off games against anyone. One thing is for certain: on current form, they shouldn’t be written off.
Premier League Stats Opta
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