By Opta Analyst | Created at 2024-12-05 17:19:29 | Updated at 2024-12-26 01:03:13
2 weeks ago
Enzo Maresca has been quick to downplay Chelsea’s hopes of winning the Premier League this season, but after yet another impressive performance, should we see his side as contenders?
Chelsea aren’t in a Premier League title race. That’s what Enzo Maresca thinks, anyway.
Before their latest victory, a 5-1 rout of Southampton on Wednesday night, Maresca stated: “We’re not in the title race. We are not, in my opinion.”
It’s a view shared by data-fed algorithms, too. Even after that victory on the south coast, Chelsea are projected to win the 2024-25 league title in just 1.0% of the Opta supercomputer’s current 10,000 simulations.
But after Liverpool dropped two points late on in their 3-3 draw at Newcastle, the gap between the Blues and Arne Slot’s side is down to seven points with 24 matchdays left and 72 potential points still to play for.
We’ve seen bigger deficits overturned across the history of the Premier League, so why not this season? Why not Chelsea?
Experience may be the key issue. The Blues’ starting XI this season has had an average age of just 23 years and 234 days old – more than two years younger than any other team in 2024-25.
That will climb throughout the season (ground-breaking analysis for you there), but this squad will still end up being one of the youngest Premier League teams of all time, and potentially younger than Chelsea were last season (23 years, 233 days) – the fourth-youngest in Premier League history.
The youngest Premier League side over a season was Leeds United in 1999-00, when they arguably overachieved by finishing third. They never really looked like challenging league winners Manchester United, though, who eventually ended up 22 points ahead of Leeds by the end of the campaign.
Arsenal’s title challenges across the last two seasons have fallen late on, and a lack of experience was certainly a contributing factor in that. In 2022-23, only Southampton had a younger side than they did (25 years, 52 days) while last season they had the third youngest average starting XI (25 years, 158 days) behind only Chelsea and Burnley.
In fact, no team has ever won a Premier League title with a starting XI aged under 25 on average. Only three clubs have won the trophy with an average under 26 years old, the youngest being Chelsea themselves back in 2004-05 under José Mourinho (25 years, 250 days) ahead of Blackburn Rovers in 1994-95 (25 years, 338 days) and Manchester United in 1995-96 (25 years, 345 days). None of them were the youngest team in the season they won it.
Trust in Youth
The oldest Chelsea player in any Premier League match this season is Tosin Adarabioyo, who was 27 years and 71 days old in Wednesday’s victory at Southampton.
Overall, that 90-minute appearance contributes towards just 442 minutes of Premier League action handed to players aged 27 or older for Chelsea this season, alongside minutes for Christopher Nkunku and Robert Sánchez since their 27th birthdays in November.
This season, Chelsea have given 10,741 minutes to players aged under 25 years old in the Premier League – no other team has surpassed 7,000 minutes in 2024-25 so far.
Those players are producing, too.
Cole Palmer, 22, has been involved in 15 goals across Chelsea’s first 14 games (9 goals, 6 assists) and leads the league for open-play chances created (32). Nicolas Jackson is less than a year older than Palmer and has eight goals and three assists.
Moisés Caicedo only turned 23 last month and has controlled games in the centre of midfield, while Levi Colwill has put in a collection of strong performances despite still being only 21. Noni Madueke is only 22 and he’s scored five goals and assisted two more in the Premier League this season, including a brilliant hat-trick in the 6-2 win at Wolves back in August.
A lack of experience in title-winning teams can’t be a problem for Enzo Fernández, with the Argentinian having already won the World Cup and the Copa América with Argentina, as well as league titles with Benfica and River Plate. He turns 24 in January.
Chelsea’s last Premier League title came in 2016-17 under Antonio Conte, with a much older squad. With an average age in their starting XI of 27 years, 253 days old, that was the eighth-oldest team to win a Premier League title (out of 32).
Players under 24 years old only played bit-part roles that season, with just 872 minutes and seven starts between Ola Aina, Nathan Aké, Michy Batshuayi, Nathaniel Chalobah, Kenedy, Ruben Loftus-Cheek and Kurt Zouma.
It was an even older squad in 2009-10 when Chelsea won the title with Carlo Ancelotti as manager. With their starting XI having an average age of 29 years and 75 days, that side remains the oldest to win a Premier League title.
You’ll Never Win Anything with Kids
On Tuesday, Maresca went on to add “because of the age, and because of how good the squad is, for me Chelsea in the next five to 10 years will be one of the teams, or the team, that is going to dominate English football.”
That’s exactly what Manchester United did in the mid-1990s and beyond.
After winning the first two Premier League titles, Man Utd were pipped to the 1994-95 league crown by a youthful Blackburn side. The summer of 1995 saw Alex Ferguson sell experienced players like Paul Ince, Mark Hughes and Andrei Kanchelskis and entrust academy products such as David Beckham, Paul Scholes, Nicky Butt and Gary and Phil Neville to replace them.
It started badly with a 3-1 loss away at Aston Villa on the opening day, which led Alan Hansen to scoff that “you can’t win anything with kids” on Match of the Day that night. We all know the ending to the story – they won the Premier League title that season and in four of the following five seasons as well.
The first two of those (1995-96 and 1996-97) constitute two of the four youngest teams to win a Premier League title, while they won the treble in 1998-99 with an average starting XI age of under 27.
A Different Chelsea
Last season saw an improvement from 2022-23, with Chelsea finishing sixth and 19 points above their 12th-place finish from the campaign before. It still wasn’t enough to save Mauricio Pochettino’s job, as he departed in the summer before being replaced by Maresca.
Maresca’s appointment underwhelmed many fans, despite the Italian winning the Championship title with Leicester City. It wasn’t the big name that most expected, but so far, his excellent coaching has seen Chelsea shake off the inconsistencies that plagued them under Pochettino and Graham Potter.
They’ve only lost twice this season, and neither were unexpected – an opening-weekend 2-0 reverse to reigning champions Manchester City and a 2-1 defeat at league leaders Liverpool in which one of the goals they conceded was a penalty.
The main difference is that they are no longer dropping points in games they are expected to win.
In their latest victory at Southampton, Chelsea took their seasonal goal tally to 57 in 22 competitive games. That’s already more than they scored in the whole of 2022-23 (50 in 50 games) and at 2.6, their goals-per-game average is the best it’s ever been in a single season in their history.
Their upcoming fixtures are relatively kind, too. After a London derby against an inconsistent Tottenham on Sunday, Chelsea play a host of games that they will be expected to win: Brentford (H), Everton (A), Fulham (H), Ipswich (A) and Crystal Palace (A) between now and 4 January. Having a ‘kinder’ schedule over a period where games come thick and fast can only be a positive for Maresca and his side.
After that batch of games, we’ll be 20 matchdays down and over the halfway mark of the 2024-25 season.
If they win five of their next six matches, they’ll have the same points tally (43) as Man City had after 20 games last season on the way to the league title. There’s a strong chance that by then we’ll be able to judge whether or not Chelsea are genuine Premier League title contenders this season.
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