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Former Arsenal attacker Paul Merson laughed off claims that Chelsea might be worried about holding on to 4th place in the Prmeier League table.
Chelsea started the season in top form, winning 11 of the first 16 games and opening up a comprehensive lead at the top. Chelsea, at one point of time, were 12 points adrift of Liverpool at 3rd but a lengthy injury crisis resulted in the Blues dropping some crucial points.
They have failed to register a single win in the last 4 Premier League games and are now trailing Liverpool by a point. The Reds also have two games in hand over the Blues.
In such a scenario, long-term Sky Sports presenter Jeff Stelling wanted to know whether Merson thought Chelsea would be worried about holding on to their top 4 spot. However, Paul Merson simply laughed off the idea:
“Nah, there is no way they are not going to be in the top 4 at the end of the season. We are at January the 22nd. Mark my words.”
Chelsea will be hoping to make up lost ground with easier set of Premier League fixtures
Needless to say, Chelsea were one of the favorites to contend for the EPL title this season. They started the season brightly despite missing several players through injury. However, Chelsea have arguably been the unluckiest of the top 3 EPL sides this season and have missed several players for consistent spells.
Romelu Lukaku recently got into a controversy for his comments about Inter Milan. Apart from the Belgian, the likes of Timo Werner, Jorginho, N’Golo Kante, Antonio Rudiger, Ben Chilwell and a host of other key players have gone through injury trouble in recent weeks.
Chelsea also had to deal with a dififcult set of fixtures across competitions. They took on Liverpool and Manchester City recently and were 3-0 winners in the EFL Cup semifinals (across 2 legs) against Tottenham Hotspur.
Reece James, who was one of Chelsea’s top performers for quite some time at the start of the season, has also suffered an injury and is expected to return in a few weeks.
However, the next few weeks are set to throw easy domestic fixtures consistently which Thomas Tuchel will be hoping to make use of. Chelsea might already have dropped out of the title race with Manchester City 13 points ahead of them. However, they are still very much alive in the Champions League and the two cup competitions and will be optimistic of ensuring a top-3 finish domestically as well.
