Last season, Chelsea finished in sixth place in the Premier League table, but that was deemed not good enough by the club's hierarchy, as they sacked manager Mauricio Pochettino.
This time around, Enzo Maresca has seemingly been tasked with getting the club back into the Champions League. That objective has rich potential to be a deal breaker when it comes to Maresca surviving beyond his first year at Stamford Bridge.
Going into this weekend's fixtures, Maresca was among the favourites to be the next PL manager to be sacked following a ropey start to the season, but a 1-0 win at Bournemouth has alleviated that pressure for the time being, while also shortening the top four odds they had prior to the international break.
Chelsea are now 6/4 to finish in the top four
The Blues' win over Bournemouth on Saturday night has seen them leapfrog Tottenham and become the most likely team outside of Man City, Arsenal and Liverpool to finish inside the Premier League's top four.
The fact that Chelsea are now among the favourites to finish inside the top four is a little surprising, given that the squad are still finding their feet after another busy transfer window. As proven by his half-time changes on Saturday night, Enzo Maresca still doesn't know his best starting XI, and there will be bumps in the road.
The main reason why Chelsea are now 6/4 favourites to finish inside the top four is perhaps due to their not being an obvious candidate outside of last season's top three. Tottenham don't seem to be able to sustain any kind of form, Man Utd are still far too open and there is a feeling that Aston Villa's league form will suffer as they juggle their European commitments.
How could the situation evolve in the coming weeks?
While Chelsea also have European commitments of their own to juggle, Enzo Maresca has left a couple of key players out of his Europa Conference League squad to ensure they retain their match fitness for league fixtures.
On top of that, their squad is huge, so the demands of playing on Thursday and Sunday in most weeks won't have as big an impact as it would on most teams.
Their league fixtures until the next international break at the beginning of October are relatively kind too. They face an away trip to the London Stadium to face a West Ham side that have only one of their opening four league games, before back-to-back home matches against Brighton and Nottingham Forest.
Chelsea will start all of those matches as favourites, so the price of 6/4 could edge closer to the evens mark by the next break in the season if everything goes to plan.
Andy is tipster who has been calling Golf tournaments for several years across many different platforms. He has covered all tournaments from the Asian Tour to the Masters.
I think they’ll be priced much better after they’ve played those upcoming fixtures.
Brighton should beat Chelsea and I wouldn’t be surprised if West Ham or even Forest took at least a point.
It’s a very fickle market but 6/4 is no value for a team as ropey as Chelsea.