WHY SAY ANYTHING?

The Champion’s League suddenly has a new significance for Chelsea this time around. Winning it looks like their best, if not only, route back into it next season.

A dismal Premier League campaign which only started to turn around when Guus Hiddink replaced Jose Mourinho was, at one stage, seeing them involved in a relegation battle. Although Hiddink hasn’t pulled up any trees he has steadied the ship somewhat and Chelsea now sit in twelfth position which is only “very” embarrassing as opposed to the “extremely” embarrassing position of a couple of months ago.

The problem with winning this competition is that Chelsea, in all their years competing, have only managed to do it once. Having lost a final against Manchester United, on penalties, they could say they were a little unlucky. They weren’t, they were outplayed for most of the game and were fortunate to hang on for penalties.

The year they won it has to go down as one of the most fortuitous campaigns ever witnessed in the history of the Champion’s League. They should have been hammered by Barcelona in the semi-final, where players were sent off and penalties were missed and, in fairness, having got through to the final, most people agreed that Chelsea’s name was on the trophy that season.

Yet again though, they had to rely on missed penalties and massive slices of luck to see the game through, this time winning on penalties. Again, many people saw this as just reward for having lost against Manchester United on penalties. It wasn’t. The final against United was one Chelsea deserved to reach, this one wasn’t. They had been outplayed in both the semi-finals and final and yet, in what was one of those freaks of football, they had emerged victorious.

So Chelsea are not going to be amongst the favourites to lift the Champion’s League trophy in May. That is not what matters. Firstly, they have to dispose of PSG to progress. That should not be beyond them. PSG are not a great team. They are a good team in an average league. In fact the league is so average that they look quite brilliant at the moment but they are not, I can assure you.

Players such as Ibrahimovic and Di Maria are vastly overrated and both have avoided tougher leagues to continue the myth that they are actually good players. Di Maria did flirt very briefly with the Premier League but was immediately found wanting and lacking the necessary talent and resolve to prosper. He has found his niche having gone from Spain, a league with two teams, to France, a league with one. He certainly knows how to make easy money!

Providing Chelsea can get past the challenge offered up by PSG they will have to hope that the draw is kind to them. Barcelona are currently too good for the Blues, as are the likes of Real Madrid and Bayern Munich but, if they can avoid theses teams until either the semi-final or final then anything can happen as we have already witnessed.

If Chelsea fail to win the Champion’s League, thereby also failing to qualify for next season’s competition, their next best hope is that Guus “the draw king” Hiddink can turn enough of those one point games into three points games so that they at least qualify for the Europa League, although that is asking a lot given their current position.

So the general message to Chelsea fans is to stay optimistic but don’t buy any maps of Europe with next season in mind, the chances are that they won’t be needed.