Why Chelsea can't seem to win the Premier League – but are more suited to European success

Chelsea
(Image credit: Getty)

Cesc Fabregas had already sworn on television before Diego Costa and David Luiz curtailed Antonio Conte’s press conference at the Hawthorns to grab him to join in the celebrations. Chelsea had won their fifth Premier League title in 13 seasons and, as the cast list from 2017 demonstrates, it was a different era.

The fifth anniversary will fall in May. If Thomas Tuchel’s team lift the World Club Cup and the Carabao Cup before then, Chelsea will have won every other conceivable honour – the Champions League, the Europa League, the Super Cup, the FA Cup – bar the Community Shield in the intervening period.

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Richard Jolly

Richard Jolly also writes for the National, the Guardian, the Observer, the Straits Times, the Independent, Sporting Life, Football 365 and the Blizzard. He has written for the FourFourTwo website since 2018 and for the magazine in the 1990s and the 2020s, but not in between. He has covered 1500+ games and remembers a disturbing number of the 0-0 draws.