It was a really, really bad weekend for Chelsea’s hopes of Champions League qualification.
In the 48 hours after Liam Rosenior’s team “set fire” (in his words) to two more Premier League points from a winning position against relegation-bound Burnley at Stamford Bridge, Liverpool found a 97th-minute winner against Nottingham Forest to join them on 45 points and Benjamin Sesko came off the bench to take Manchester United three points clear in fourth place with a decisive late goal against Everton.
Now, more than ever, the Premier League table backs up the theory that one of United, Chelsea or Liverpool will finish sixth and miss out on elite European football next season. With 11 matches of the 2025-26 season to go, Opta’s supercomputer thinks Chelsea are the likeliest to end up on the outside looking in, with a 15 per cent chance of finishing fourth, a 24 per cent chance of finishing fifth, and a 32 per cent chance of finishing sixth. As was the case last season, the team who finishes in fifth place will almost certainly earn a place in the Champions League.
Those odds are heavily influenced by the ominous strength of Chelsea’s remaining fixtures. They must take on the other five clubs in the Premier League’s top six in their final 11 games, including massive head-to-head clashes with United and Liverpool. The average league position of their remaining league opponents is 8.6 — as the graphic below demonstrates, they have the hardest run-in in the Premier League — and that is before you even consider that Rosenior must also put his best foot forward in the Champions League and FA Cup.
Chelsea have actually been the second-best team in the Premier League since Rosenior’s appointment, taking 14 points from six matches. There are only two problems with that statistic: one, it could and probably should have been 18 if they had not frittered away leads against Leeds United and Burnley, and two, United have been even better under Michael Carrick, taking 16 points and beating Manchester City and Arsenal in the process.
To defy the projections, Chelsea may need to lean into their ability to raise their level against more talented opponents. The signature performance of the BlueCo era was the Club World Cup final dismantling of Champions League holders Paris Saint-Germain in June. Liverpool and Barcelona have tasted defeat at Stamford Bridge this season, while Arsenal were held to a 1-1 draw despite Moises Caicedo’s early red card. Chelsea even snatched a 1-1 draw with City at the Etihad Stadium under the interim leadership of Calum McFarlane.
There is an established school of thought that this Chelsea side are better against opponents who meet them on an equal footing, rather than simply ceding the ball and territory. It is one that appears to be backed up to a meaningful extent by this season’s numbers; they score more goals, concede fewer, and earn more points from matches in which they register less than 60 per cent possession, compared to games in which they monopolise the ball.
Low opposition defensive blocks have been a particularly sharp thorn in Chelsea’s side at Stamford Bridge, which has witnessed 17 of their 19 points dropped from winning positions. Burnley manager Scott Parker readily admitted after Saturday’s game that his game plan was aimed at congesting the middle of the pitch and slowing down what is already the second-most patient possession team in the Premier League after City.
Rosenior lamented how “safe” his Chelsea players became with their passing against Burnley, at the cost of the “incision” he always wants to see. That is easier to achieve against teams who play higher up the pitch, and eight of their final 11 opponents feature in the Premier League’s top 10 for the average starting distance from goal of their attacking sequences:
Chelsea’s upcoming opponents play high
Chelsea should encounter fewer low blocks and find more space to generate attacking threat in the final stretch of their Premier League campaign. The flip side, though, is that any sloppiness or indiscipline is even more likely to be punished by a higher standard of opponent.
Last season, Enzo Maresca’s team averaged 1.4 points per game against the top half of the division and 2.0 points per game against the bottom half. Those numbers are strikingly similar this season: 1.4 points per game against the top half and 1.9 points per game against the bottom half, a slight dip attributable in no small part to Chelsea’s recent slip-ups at Stamford Bridge against Leeds and Burnley.
Overall, Rosenior’s side are on pace for 63 points — six points fewer than they earned last season and the same tally they reached under Mauricio Pochettino in 2023-24, when they finished sixth. Any hope of exceeding that number will likely require Chelsea’s recent habit of finding a finishing kick to continue: Pochettino ended his lone full season with five consecutive victories, while Maresca won five of his final six Premier League games in 2025-26.
If they can dig deep and find fresh reserves of quality and resilience, Chelsea’s run-in could also be remarkably consequential for the entire division.
Matches against Arsenal and City could make them Premier League title kingmakers, or spoilers. Clashes with United and Liverpool leave their Champions League qualification destiny firmly in their own hands. A mid-May date with Tottenham at Stamford Bridge could even give them a big hand in condemning their most hated rivals to a historic relegation.
There is no getting around the fact that Chelsea’s remaining fixture list in the Premier League looks ominous. But it does not require much squinting to also see the outline of an opportunity.