Chelsea Blip-O-Meter Reading

86-8 = 78 points

Chelsea Blip-O-Meter reading: 4.0

We hope that the Blip-O-Meter can return to its place in the Chelsea Museum cabinet. The needle bounced around a bit too much for my liking in the first half against Sunderland but in the second half it fell to its lowest reading for several months.

78 points means second or third.

We have a maximum potential of 86 points if we win all remaining 14 games. However, before we get over-excited by this possibility, a brief review of the last nine years (2001/02 – 2009/10) PL top fives shows that even that is unlikely to be enough to retain the Premiership.

1st 87, 83, 90, 95, 91, 89, 87, 90, 86
2nd 80, 78, 79, 83, 83, 83, 85, 86, 85
3rd 77, 69, 75, 77, 82, 68, 83, 83, 75
4th 71, 67, 60, 61, 67, 68, 76, 72, 70
5th 66, 64, 56, 58, 65, 60, 65, 63, 67

Only twice was 86 or less enough, and one of those was us last year, which was the result of us taking maximum points off all our main contenders. Even if we do the double over Manchester United Company Limited it will still leave us two games adrift over the dozen remaining fixtures (two more defeats or three draws) and then still at the mercy of goal difference. I don’t know their run-in, but that’s some implosion from where they are today.

However, I’m a glass-half-full kinda guy.

While we won’t throw in the towel, realistically the gap is too great to bridge. However a friendly UCL second round draw has placed us a feasible four games away from another UCL Final – at Wembley. If we can graft Luiz into the defence quickly, nobody will look forward to playing us again.

Torres, Drogba and Anelka may “job-share” like Crespo and Drogba under Mourinho.

Unlike a lot of other years we will be able to rest key players ahead of UCL games in a similar manner to that Liverpool (oh, the irony…) was able to do under Benitez – with the exception of the year they were sitting second and therefore compelled to keep challenging for the Premiership (and fell over against us in the UCL semi-final).