Gary Neville has backed Chelsea to finish in the Premier League\u2019s Champions League places, going as far as suggesting they could finish second and emerge as Arsenal\u2019s closest challengers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The former Manchester United defender believes Chelsea have assembled a squad capable of competing at the highest level, while experienced additions could help improve the team\u2019s standards and mentality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI think they\u2019re a certainty to finish in the Champions League place. I think they could even be second. They could get nearest to Arsenal,\u201d Neville said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
According to Neville, the influence of new signings Danny Welbeck and Jordan Henderson could prove particularly important. He believes their experience will provide Chelsea with greater discipline, organisation and leadership within the dressing room.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI think the signings of Welbeck and Henderson bring standards, discipline, organization, and guardianship of the dressing room,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The prediction places Chelsea firmly among the teams expected to challenge near the top of the Premier League, with Neville seeing them as potential contenders for second place.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Gary Neville has backed Chelsea to finish in the Premier League\u2019s Champions League places, going as far as suggesting they could finish second and emerge as Arsenal\u2019s closest challengers. The<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":121,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"googlesitekit_rrm_CAow7J_NDA:productID":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[26],"tags":[33,32,34,36,35],"class_list":["post-122","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports","tag-chelsea","tag-football","tag-neville","tag-premier-league","tag-welbeck"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/trendsmill.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/img_1030.jpg?fit=1088%2C947&ssl=1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/trendsmill.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/trendsmill.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/trendsmill.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trendsmill.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trendsmill.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=122"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/trendsmill.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trendsmill.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/121"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/trendsmill.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=122"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trendsmill.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=122"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trendsmill.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=122"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}