Back in the off-season, the schedule makers decided that Chelsea football club must play nine games in the month of December, and Blues manager Antonio Conte has not been shy about expressing his discontent with this. The excessive workload in the final month of the calendar year has even inspired him to claim that there is a conspiracy against him.
Additionally, the Blues had yet another match on the penultimate day of November, giving the reigning Premier League champions a whopping 10 games in a 32 day stretch.
The end of 2017, the festive period as it’s typically referred to with all the holidays that abound, has given Conte’s men plenty of fixture congestion to deal with right now. In 2018, the hectic pace will continue, as the Stamford Bridge outfit has three games during the first 13 days of January. However, there are just two more matches during the rest of the month, and thus the work load will become substantially lightened.
Antonio Conte has repeatedly ripped the schedule makers, even to the point that Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp has criticized the Italian for his complaining. The two men are currently engaged in a hotly contested battle for the top four, which football betting sites are now viewing as a five team race for the three remaining slots. Manchester City are off the Sky Bet boards, as they are on a record setting pace to win the Premier League with the best mark of all time.
The race for the other three remaining Champions League qualification positions begins with Manchester United who are backed at 1/12. Chelsea are facing very favorable odds at 1/4, while Liverpool are in good shape as well at 8/11. That would leave the two north London clubs on the outside look in, and thus relegated to the Europa League. Tottenham Hotspur are currently backed at 5/4 while Arsenal have odds at 11/8.
Chelsea can forget about the league title race with Manchester City showing 1/25 odds there, and Chelsea backed at just 66/1. Conte himself has conceded the league title, very bluntly, on more than one occasion.
It was somewhat expected that Chelsea would struggle to retain their league title this season. Last year they didn’t have the additional workload of European football to deal with, leaving them with fresher legs for domestic play. Additionally, the Blues may have sent too many players out on loan this past summer, and the depleted depth is an issue, especially now with all of the additional matches.
Paul M. Banks runs The Sports Bank.net and TheBank.News, which is partnered with News Now. Banks, a former writer for the Washington Times, NBC Chicago.com and Chicago Tribune.com, currently contributes regularly to WGN CLTV and the Tribune company’s blogging community Chicago Now.
Follow him on Twitter, Instagram, Sound Cloud, LinkedIn and YouTube.