Are Chelsea title challengers?
Last season, even after a bright start to his Stamford Bridge reign, head coach Enzo Maresca would always refuse to entertain the idea. Chelsea, he said, were “not ready” to challenge the likes of Arsenal, Manchester City, and Liverpool — and he turned out to be correct, with Liverpool pulling away and the west Londoners eventually only securing fourth place on the final day of the league season in May.
On Friday, talking to the media to preview Sunday’s top-of-the-table meeting with visiting leaders Arsenal (Chelsea entered the weekend in second place), Maresca was less pessimistic — but still restrained.
“I think, for sure, it’s different compared to one year ago,” he said. “We spent one more year together. Then again, for me it’s very early. We are still at the end of November. So it’s very early, and it’s important to be where we are now in March, April.”
Enzo Maresca thinks it is too early to call whether his Chelsea team are in this season’s title hunt (Carl Recine/Getty Images)
Chelsea will be three points behind Arsenal if they beat them today. It would be their smallest gap to the Premier League summit after 13 games since 2021-22, when they led at that stage and went on to finish third.
They are closer to Arsenal than anyone at the time of writing (Manchester City and Aston Villa play earlier in the weekend and can be above Chelsea by the time of Sunday’s kick-off at Stamford Bridge) — but does the evidence so far indicate they will be able to sustain a challenge?
The Athletic breaks down the key questions over their title credentials.
What does the data say?
Let’s start with the positives.
Chelsea’s underlying numbers do not indicate that their present position in the table is a fluke. They rank third in the Premier League for non-penalty xG difference per game — a metric that accounts for how many goals they would be expected to concede and score, based on the quality of the chances for and against them.
That marries up with their actual goal difference, which was the third-best in the Premier League entering the weekend. Only Manchester City and Arsenal have scored more goals across this season’s first 12 league games.
The caveat is that, based on Opta’s Power Rankings, Chelsea have had the easiest fixtures in the league so far. As well as leaders Arsenal, they are yet to face City and Villa, who went into the weekend placed third and fourth respectively.
Their points per game rate also indicates that this level of performance is unlikely to be enough to challenge for the title. If they maintained their current average over the full 38 matches, Chelsea would finish with 73 points — enough for a Champions League place every season since 2017-18, but not to be champions. Over the past nine seasons, the average points won by the team lifting the Premier League trophy is 92.6.
We can also see from Chelsea’s 10-game rolling points-per-game average, giving an indication of form across a campaign, why Maresca was right to urge against giddiness last season.
Chelsea’s results from their 12 games so far are similar to their returns in the previous one, the only difference being that this campaign opened with a draw and a win rather than a loss and a win. A poor run of two wins in seven matches at the start of 2025 put paid to their title hopes, before a late surge secured another season of European football.
Can their squad cope?
Each of the current first-choice XI has cover, and most of these players are getting regular rest, thanks to Maresca’s commitment to squad rotation.
Chelsea have made wholesale changes between several midweek and Premier League games, and Maresca is making much more use of his bench. In the Premier League, 11.6 per cent of Chelsea’s minutes have been played by substitutes — the highest in the league, and almost double last season’s figure of 6.8 per cent. The fact many of the players coming on in Premier League games are getting regular midweek minutes no doubt helps maintain their match sharpness.
Crucially, Chelsea seem to be improving at rotating their squad without the team’s performances suffering. There are exceptions to this — in the 2-2 Champions League draw with Qarabag in Azerbaijan at the start of this month, a heavily-rotated side struggled — but it no longer feels as though they are over-reliant on particular players.
Last season, when Nicolas Jackson and Cole Palmer suffered coinciding dips in form, it left an attacking void. Now, the goals are being spread around, and Chelsea have avoided over-reliance on any one attacker. That should help avoid a repeat of that costly post-Christmas wobble.
Chelsea are less reliant on Cole Palmer than they were last season (Maja Hitij/Getty Images)
The attack has performed despite losing Palmer, who Maresca says is available to start against Arsenal, and new first-choice striker Liam Delap to injuries, and the defence has stood relatively firm even with extensive rotation. Midfield is the area where injuries to key players, particularly Moises Caicedo and Enzo Fernandez, would be most problematic. With Romeo Lavia and Dario Essugo both out of action, though the latter has now returned to training, there is less cover.
Can they keep their heads?
As the table below shows, Chelsea have gone some way in recent weeks to improving concerns about their defensive fragility.
Chelsea’s defensive improvement
First six gamesPast six games
GF
11
12
GA
8
3
Clean sheets
2
4
Points
8
15
Their four Premier League clean sheets in the past five games have come against Wolverhampton Wanderers, Burnley (the bottom two in the table entering this weekend’s fixtures), Nottingham Forest (ending the dismal, short-lived tenure of Ange Postecoglou) and a Tottenham Hotspur side who only created 0.1 xG on the day. But it’s still a marked improvement.
A large part of that has been keeping calmer heads at the back. Across September and October, Chelsea had three players sent off in the Premier League and made seven errors leading to opposition shots. In November, they have so far managed to keep all their players on the pitch and only made two errors leading to shots.
Avoiding self-inflicted damage will be crucial if they are to sustain a title challenge, and they seem to be making progress in that regard.
Are they experienced enough?
Perhaps the most glaring difference between Chelsea and Arsenal is inexperience, a stick that’s often used to beat Enzo and his side. Under Mikel Arteta, Arsenal have finished second in each of the past three seasons. This is only Maresca’s second campaign as a Premier League manager, and his first juggling top-tier football at both domestic and European levels.
There is some truth to Chelsea being labelled inexperienced, as they have the youngest squad in the division, even when weighted by minutes played.
The chart below shows they have a significant cluster of young players who are featuring fairly regularly, but not heavily.
Arsenal have far fewer young players.
However, when we look at both teams’ core personnel (those who are playing more than 75 per cent of minutes), they profile similarly. Chelsea and Arsenal both have seven men who fall into this category; for both groups, the average age is 25.4 and 25.7 respectively, and most of them made their Premier League debuts (including for other clubs) between 2020 and 2023.
Chelsea certainly have a younger squad — but their core players actually have a relatively similar level of Premier League experience to Arsenal’s, if not necessarily of being in a title race.
Are they expecting to challenge?
Of course, the flip side to that is Maresca and Arteta are approaching this season from different contexts. In the near six years since Arteta took over at Arsenal, Chelsea have gone through an ownership change and are on their fifth different permanent manager.
That is not to paint Chelsea as plucky underdogs. They too have invested heavily, including breaking the British transfer record twice — but before the games began in August, there was much less external expectation surrounding them than Arsenal in terms of a title push.
Winning the UEFA Conference League, returning to the Champions League and lifting the first edition of FIFA’s expanded Club World Cup, beating European champions Paris Saint-Germain 3-0 in the final of the latter, were positive signs. But internally at Chelsea, the expectation is for Maresca’s side to retain their Champions League status for 2026-27 and to push further and for longer in the battle over the domestic crown — but without a feeling the Premier League must be won this season.
How important is Sunday to Chelsea’s title hopes?
Obvious point first: with more than half of the season to go, individual results are not a reliable indicator of who will lift trophies months from now.
Losing today — as long as it is a respectable defeat, rather than being massively outclassed — would not be a disaster. Arsenal have let an eight-point lead slip as late as April in recent years, so falling nine points behind them in November will not be insurmountable. Likewise, a win would still leave them three points behind Arsenal and with plenty of work to do to overtake them.
What three points would do, though, is mark a step forward — from part of the chasing pack to serious challengers.
Maresca highlighted on Friday the importance of Chelsea being able to compete “against any team”. Last season, they only took four points from a possible 18 against the eventual top three of Liverpool, Arsenal and City. They have been unable to directly hurt their would-be title rivals.
Fresh from their 3-0 home Champions League defeat of Barcelona on Tuesday, their momentum is as strong as it will ever be — but then, so is Arsenal’s, having beaten Spurs 4-1 in the north London derby last Sunday and, three days later, Bayern Munich 3-1, also at the Emirates Stadium.
