Even though it's a different ball game over 38 games the way we won the UCL was always going to give us some credit even if it was in some places overzealous. Holding your nerve for trophies has often been the start of a domino effect when it's the league cup let alone the Champions League.
That said I do feel with a largely fully fit first Xl (in other words the team that played Juve bar Mount and Kai in for Ziyech and Pulisic) we could challenge even now but unfortuently that's looking like an outragoues long shot.
Chelsea did unbelievably well win the CL and you certainly won't get anything but gratitude for that happening on this forum - for obvious reasons!
However, winning a Champions League can be luck. If you start at the R16 (which I believe Tuchel did), it's actually possible to win 0 games in normal-time/ET and still lift the trophy. It's also obviously heavily influenced by the draw. Had Chelsea got City, Bayern or PSG over two legs, I think that would have been the end of it.
I think sometimes people fail a little to understand what you're up against with City. They have 23 hand-selected players, two or even three options in each position, all of them round pegs in round hole and perfectly suited to playing the system the manager wants them to play. They have barely any rate of change in the squad from one year to the next, and replacements for outgoing players are usually arranged two seasons in advance to ensure the whole thing is seamless. Their squad are nearly all about the right age profile, operating in their prime years. I just don't see Chelsea at anywhere near this level personally. You need to get 90+ pts to put pressure on City, and Chelsea just don't look like the kind of team that can operate at about 2.5PPG
