In the eighth instalment of Metro’s In The Mixer, we’re looking at Chelsea’s start to the season and why the Blues have struggled for consistency ahead of their next Premier League game against Liverpool. Sign up to receive this, plus exclusive analysis, insights and transfer talk straight to your inbox every week.
When Reece James lifted the Club World Cup trophy earlier this summer, flanked by his teammates (and Donald Trump), the mood at Chelsea was buoyant.
The Blues had just dominated a PSG side that many consider to be the best in the world to take home the title of ‘World Champions’.
That result definitely raised expectations for Chelsea this season, with the now-injured Levi Colwill doing more than most to fan the flames: ‘I said at the start of this tournament that our plan is to win it and people looked at me as if I was crazy,’ he said.
‘I’m going to say the exact same thing now going into the Premier League and Champions League.’
Colwill, of course, was cruelly ruled out of the rest of the season after tearing his ACL in training before the season even started, but that’s not the only problem Chelsea are facing.
Chelsea are sitting 8th in the league after six games and are somehow going into this weekend with an injury crisis in spite of all of their transfer business.
They suddenly feel a bit disjointed and could be in danger of letting their season drift over the next month, unless manager Enzo Maresca can address the underlying problems.
Chelsea’s striker problem
While Chelsea have the talent to score plenty of goals, they have been blunted in recent months by a combination of players losing form and Maresca’s structured style that can struggle to break teams down when not working perfectly.
The main worry for the manager will be the fact that this is not a new problem.
In the first half of last season, Chelsea picked up 35 points from 19 games and scored 38 goals. Only Liverpool and Tottenham had scored more and Maresca’s side felt like they could be the ‘best of the rest’ behind the Reds.
That goal tally dropped in the second half of the season to 26 – just three more than the likes of Wolves, West Ham and Manchester United.
And while their 11 scored so far ranks them 4th in the league, five of those came against West Ham, and they have struggled at times to create good chances.
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Maresca can point to the red cards against Manchester United and Brighton in recent weeks as mitigating factors, but a number of players have also been out of form since the start of 2025.
Nicolas Jackson was deemed too wasteful and was moved on during the transfer window. In came Joao Pedro and Liam Delap to ease the goalscoring burden on Cole Palmer, who has been directly involved in 40% of Chelsea’s league goals since joining the club.
Pedro has had a positive start to his Chelsea career, but both he and Delap, once he is back from injury, need to take the pressure off Palmer.
Cole Palmer needs a rest
Before the season started, In The Mixer reader Clive wrote in to express his concern at the number of games Chelsea have been playing.
‘Football players are expected to constantly play the game, especially clubs like Chelsea and to a lesser extent Manchester City because they competed in the Club World Cup,’ he said. ‘Surely these clubs should start their league season in early September.’
Clive has a point – take Palmer for example.
Since joining Chelsea in September 2023, Palmer has gone from barely playing at Manchester City to immediately being the lynchpin of a team challenging for multiple trophies.
In his first season he played nearly every minute in the Premier League and across Chelsea’s cup runs to the semi-final of the FA Cup and the Carabao Cup final.
He then went to EURO 2024 before coming back to Chelsea where he again played nearly every minute in the league as well as a key role in their Conference League win.
Palmer and his teammates then went to the USA for the Club World Cup and had a short rest before starting this season again.
It’s no wonder he started looking tired in the second half of last season and is now out injured with a groin problem – one which he has been trying to shrug off for a while.
Chelsea’s downturn in form last season coincided with Palmer’s, and for them to be a consistent success they need to find a way to give him the rest he needs without feeling reliant on him in every single game.
Will Chelsea finish in the top four this season?
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Yes
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No
Is Chelsea’s transfer policy helping or hurting their chances?
Consistency and experience are two of the factors managers tend to look for, especially in the Premier League and especially in teams that are trying to challenge for the title.
The Manchester City side that won four titles in a row had an average age of around 27 across each season, while Arsenal have added 26-year-old Martin Zubimendi and 27-year-olds Eberechi Eze and Viktor Gyokeres this year in a bid to finally finish ahead of City and Liverpool.
Chelsea, on the other hand, have the youngest squad in the league with an average age of 23.3.
Their transfer strategy is to keep a consistent cashflow by buying young players every year, who they can sell on for good fees if things don’t quite work out.
The strategy works because they can always get good fees for the players they are selling while still being able to buy genuinely world-class talents like Palmer or Moises Caicedo.
But young players are inconsistent, and constant changes to the squad have never been a reliable way to compete – just look at Liverpool’s performances this season compared to last.
Estevao, Jamie Gittens and Jorrel Hato will all go on to have successful careers at the top of the game but were they what Chelsea needed?
Does a side with Robert Sanchez in goal end up challenging for the title?
And that’s what Chelsea should be aiming for. Players like Cole Palmer won’t stick around for long otherwise.
This weekend’s game against Liverpool could be exactly what Maresca needs to get the feel-good feeling back at Stamford Bridge.
The manager’s decisions in recent weeks have come under increased scrutiny.
From taking Estevao and Pedro Neto off before the injured Palmer after going down to ten men at Old Trafford to becoming increasingly blunt in his dismissal of certain players, Maresca needs to ensure that performances become more consistent to avoid upsetting the dressing room with his approach.