No one would like to see the EPL’s final tally without its defending champion: Chelsea on a top position – perhaps among top four places. Chelsea’s temporary manager Rafael Benitez also hinted about his desire to at least make a comeback and secured one of the top four places, and for that, he is even willing to sacrifice their FA cup journey. According to him, they are playing too many matches these days hence they need to fix their priorities and select one of them rather jumping towards all of them. Notably, Chelsea’s chances of finishing among top four shunned on Sunday when City defeated them by 2-0, and now, Tottenham will be ahead of them if it overcomes West Ham at Upton Park on Monday night. For Benitez, their horror show on Sunday gave their rivals an opportunity to go ahead of them. When asked about any reason for ignoring Captain John Terry for their big fight with City, he said, it was necessary and a part of strategy for last few weeks of the EPL. However, when he was asked about which of the leagues they would prioritize out of EPL, FA Cup, and Europa League, he replied,
“If we feel we need to prioritise something we will do it. We are playing too many games, games each three days. You have to manage your squad. We know that we still have to do our job because Arsenal, Tottenham and Everton are close. It will be tough until the end. We have to show our quality in every competition, this is clear. The race for the top four will go to the last day of the season. Our last game is against Everton, so I’m sure that it will be very tight, very close to the end.”
While explain about John Terry, he replied, “We changed players like I did against Sparta Prague. Some players have fresh legs and you can play them. We need to keep energy in the side and this is why we made changes and the defeat is disappointing, but we have to keep going. This was a chance to get closer to City in second, but now we have to keep fighting for the top four. We knew that by winning we would be even closer but we didn’t do it and we didn’t play well in the first half.”
Precisely, if Chelsea fails to finish among top four, it would be very difficult for it to qualify for the next year’s Champions League which now looks a dare task considering their last match at Etihad Stadium.