Pundit on why two wins in March were “massively vital” for Chelsea | OneFootball

It was just a couple of weeks ago we noted that John Obi Mikel had looked ahead at Chelsea’s fixtures on his podcast with trepidation.

Well, after an interminable international break, here we are. We’ve reached the tough stretch to finish the season, which was enough to make Mikel very nervy not long ago.

The first one is already out of the way – we lost to Arsenal 1-0. Not the ideal start to this run. And it won’t get much easier:

“Spurs at home. Brentford away. We know how good Brentford are. They’re very good at home,” Mikel’s co-host read out in their podcast.

“Ipswich Town, who beat you in the reverse fixture. You’d expect to beat them at Stamford Bridge. But then you’ve got to go to Fulham. Fulham beat you at the Bridge. You’ve then got Everton at home, Everton have turned things around. Liverpool at home. Newcastle away. Man United at home. And you finish at Nottingham Forest.”

Mikel sweats over Chelsea run in

John Obi Mikel speaks on his podcast about Chelsea’s run in.

“That run in is not easy. That run in is not easy. You’ve just killed me with that,” Mikel said, glancing down the list of games to come.

“You just absolutely killed me with that. Looking at that now, what you’re just said, those run-ins you’ve just mentioned. Those games that we have to play… these last 6 points [against Leicester and Southampton] were massively vital, that we didn’t mess up.”

We agree, it looks nasty. Still, given we’re out of the cups and league position is all we have to play for, in a perverse way we rather enjoy the fact that it will be tough to get these results. It adds some drama and jeopardy to a run-in that could otherwise be rather dull.