Chelsea: Enzo Maresca progress the real deal as buoyant Blues become favourites for fourth

Heading into the last international break in October, it was still difficult to gauge exactly what Chelsea were and how good they might become.

Fourth place in the Premier League table exceeded expectations, but the fixture list had been relatively kind, save the defeat by Manchester City on opening weekend.

There was a madcap win at Wolves, a dogged one at Bournemouth, a cruise past West Ham and the Cole Palmer show against Brighton. But there were also disappointing home draws with Crystal Palace and a Nottingham Forest side who finished with 10 men to ensure optimism was kept cautious.

The subsequent four matches were forecast at that stage as likely to give a truer measure of what appeared to be swift progress under Enzo Maresca. That Chelsea emerge from that run a place higher - in third spot for the first time since the end of the 2021/22 campaign - suggests it is real.

Five points from games against Liverpool, Newcastle, Manchester United and Arsenal represents a decent collective return. For all these things even out over a season, timing could have been kinder, too: Newcastle have just hit their stride, United had just sacked Erik ten Hag and Arsenal welcomed back Martin Odegaard. Either way, it is one more point than Chelsea managed in the same fixtures under Mauricio Pochettino last term.

But the games in isolation have also felt broadly representative of where this Chelsea team are at. They aren’t as good as leaders Liverpool, but they are better than the team stuffed 4-1 at Anfield in January, and better than the current Newcastle, too.

They, like each Chelsea iteration of the last 11 league seasons, were not good enough to win away at Old Trafford. But at least, unlike on the last two visits, they did not lose.

And they might not quite have been good enough to take advantage of a struggling Arsenal at home, but they did fight back from behind to claim a positive 1-1 draw. Last season, the feeling was different after it was the Gunners who scored twice late on to salvage a 2-2.

So where now for Maresca, with almost a third of the season gone and expectations now surely revised? The Italian has insisted his team are ahead of schedule and still adrift of Liverpool, Manchester City and Arsenal, though they are level on points with the latter and better off on goal difference.

Even should the Gunners pick up, as is expected now Odegaard is back and their fixtures ease, the race for fourth has a wide-open feel. At this stage, Chelsea have to be just about favourites, with easily the deepest squad and, in Palmer, the best player of any team in the mix.

The caveat is traffic: Chelsea may be third but are only a point clear of Aston Villa in ninth, and only four above Manchester United, who are 13th and somehow not yet cut adrift despite having dallied over Ten Hag’s exit and only now reset their campaign with the arrival of Ruben Amorim.

So many teams have taken points off one another that where at the same stage of last term six clubs had already broken the 20-point barrier, this season it is only two. Should that trend continue it will likely lower the ask for Champions League qualification in terms of points needed, but also swell the field.

Games against Aston Villa and Tottenham in early December will be billed as pivotal clashes between rivals, but the race will surely be won by the most consistent team, not that which hits the highest level, and Chelsea can collect just as many points by beating Southampton and Leicester in between.

From this point last season, a run of four defeats in six matches left Pochettino’s team too much New Year ground to recover. For now at least, they head the chasing pack this time around with realistic designs on staying there.