Following Chelsea’s hard fought 1-0 victory over Brentford on Saturday evening, Gary Neville was full of praise for Thomas Tuchel’s team, singling out Romelu Lukaku’s poor form as a potential advantage in the title race.
Despite defeat to Man City, the former fullback cited victories over London rivals Arsenal and Tottenham – as well as the draw at Anfield – as key factors as to why they could win the league this campaign.
Speaking on Sky Sports (via football.london) he said: “They’ve played Arsenal, City, Tottenham, Liverpool and they’re top of the league, they’ve had a really tough start.”
This is all fair enough, Chelsea will undoubtedly be a title rival this season but Neville then went on to say: “Lukaku’s not at his best either so again that’s another good sign, you’re top of the league and your main striker’s not firing so he’ll fire later in the season.
Liverpool have the best XI but I’m not sure – one or two things go wrong like it did last season with van Dijk or if Salah got injured, I think they’re a little bit exposed to that.”
Quite how Lukaku not being in form can be seen as a positive and the prospect of Virgil van Dijk and Mo Salah possibly getting injured as a reason we can’t win the league is baffling.
The Belgian international has yet to find the net in his last six appearances for the Blues, so we can only imagine that Chelsea’s limited firepower will come back to bite our title rivals down the line.
With a free-scoring front-three and van Dijk at the heart of defence for the only unbeaten team in the league, we’ll be more than happy to be underestimated at this early point of the campaign.
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