The biggest risers in the charts were the club who finished six places higher than last season, took 19 more points and scored over twice as many goals. That success story of the final Premier League table is, er, Chelsea. Yes, that Chelsea, the byword for excess, the club who spent £1bn to regress, the petri dish for Todd Boehly’s weird and wacky ideas.
Or, to put it another way, Chelsea still finished three places lower than they had two years earlier, taking 11 points fewer in 2023-24 than in 2021-22. Mauricio Pochettino has argued that the new Chelsea should not be judged by the standards of the old, the serial trophy winners packed with senior players. Perhaps it flatters him to compare this season with the artificial low of the 2022-23 car crash, the Potter-Lampard year of four managers, a mere 44 points, just 38 goals and the historic failure of 12th place.
