Why Chelsea are the favorites and why they aren't

Chelsea seem to be almost everyone’s favourite to win the league title,but people seem to have looked over an important fact.

I can understand why Chelsea are the favourites.Firstly,Chelsea haven't sold anyone yet,which means they have a settled squad. Manutd have lost the world's best player in Ronaldo and that does make them considerably weaker. Tevez too was instrumental in the past two campaigns,scoring some important match winning goals.Liverpool too have lost their most consistent player from last season in Alonso, a player who seemed to be at his peak.Arsenal have lost big players in Adebayor and Toure.Looking at the additions to the squads,Chelsea have bought Zirkhov and Strurridge.The former is acclaimed to be one of the best left sided player around in the world right now and the latter is still untried at Premiership level, albiet having a few substitute appearances while he was at Man City. Manutd haven’t really set the world alight with surprisingly low key transfers.Pool meanwhile,or I should say Rafael Benitez meanwhile keeps surprising people with uninspiring transfers.Glen Johnson for 17m pounds?!!How much better is he than Arbeloa? Aquilani one the other hand might be a shrewd addition,only time will tell.

Chelsea also have an edge in the midfield scoring department.This in my opinion has made them the favourites for the league title. Every deck chair pundit knows that for a team to win the league you need midfielders who can score as well or the forwards should have one hell of a season.Manutd have had Giggs, Scholes, Beckham and even Keane scoring goals for them

on a regular basis when they were in prime.Ronaldo did so for the past 3 seasons.Arsenal had Pires,Ljunberg and Vieira ,Chelsea had Lampard, Robben and Duff

In the defense and striking department the top four are pretty much even.But what people seem to have missed out is the fact that,a diamond formation never works in the Premier League.Mourinho was unsuccessful with a squad arguably even better than the current Chelsea squad. The most experienced and successful managers in the premier league Sir Alex,Wenger and Harry Redknapp have never deployed a team with a diamond formation,simply because you need width to break down teams who just park the bus in front of goal and defend for the whole 90 mins. You need wingers who can stretch defences and pull defenders out of position.If Ancelotti sticks to his slow passing game, which almost bored the opposition into sleep, that he used at Milan then Chelsea can forget about winning the league.

And even for the diamond to be successful,they need a world class holding midfielder like Pirlo.Mikel is nowhere close,and Ancelotti knows it. No wonder he tried to sign Pirlo,a player who is on the wrong side of 30.So that is yet another problem for Chelsea. Oh,and then there is the small matter of the African Nations Cup.I guess the likes of Drogba,Essien and Kalou are going to miss a few games.In any case,this season promises to be as exciting as ever and I think the fight for the title will go down to the wire.

P.S.-History says favorites rarely go on to win the title