Chelsea is further from the Champions League race than ever

January is over, the transport window is neared, and Chelsea will now have to start working with what they have (aside from Andrey Santos, who can still be inscribed if he gets a work permit).

The defense about the latest players bedding in will only grow less pertinent, and the pressure on the squad to start racking up victories will only grow.

Do you think Graham Potter’s new look Chelsea can put together a run and finish in the top 4? If you do, now is the time to back it and bet in new-zealand with bet365, or wherever you are. Your disparity won’t get much great than this.

With just over half the season played, Chelsea is 10th with 31 points. We’ve got to catch Newcastle, on 41. It’s not impossible, but it will require a pretty astonishing transformation from a team who have won twice in the league since mid-October

It’s not just a question of the 10-point gap – it’s a question of actually winning games. It would be a challenge to be near that dissimilarity if we were in good form – as it is, we’ve beaten Crystal Palace and Bournemouth since the World Cup.

You could say that we’ve got some simple sports coming up – Southampton next weekend, managerless Leeds after that, Leicester, and then Everton.

But looking at our results from the last duel of weeks shows that playing weaker sides doesn’t warrant you anything – exclude dismay if you drop points. Some of these squads are in a bad way – but that only means they’ll be more anguished for points than ever, and we don’t look like a side up for the brawl at the instant.

No surprise the chances of us making the Champions League places are so high – we’d have to catch high-flying Newcastle to do it. They look more mostly to build on their lead than grope it at the minute. Ahead of them are Man U, Man City, and Arsenal, all of whom are having great summers, and none of whom look likely to fragment to the degree they would desire for us to catch them.

So for a Chelsea bettor, possibly the best thing to do is to have a flutter, knowing it’s a long shot, then sit back and 

love watching this team moderately come together over the course of the next few months, without agonizing too much about where we end.

Besides, we hear the Congress League is pretty at this time of year…