Chelsea added a little excitement at the end of the season against Watford with those two goals in the last five minutes of the final game. It was dramatic, even if the real jeopardy was happening elsewhere.Manchester City left it fairly late to have their five-minute splurge to tie up the title against Aston Villa and it would be hard to begrudge them the honour, as they ended up with 99 goals in the Premier League alone. They would have loved to have made the 100 mark, but I suspect winning the title will keep them relatively happy in the meantime.Chelsea began this sort of scoring rout back in 2009/10 with that 103-goal haul, as Didier and the boys cruised to the title. Getting 100 is rare but City seem to have the knack lately having reached the century three times already this century.Maybe that is the standard you have to aim for now if you are going to win or even challenge for the Premier League. These days you have to get around about a ton of goals and add to that, over 90 points to be in the Premier League shake-up. That is a seriously tall order. This season, of the 114 points available to them, City picked up 93. This is a new order of quality in what is still the toughest league on the planet.

This is however where Thomas Tuchel will be aiming next season and that will not be an easy task. There is one thing that isn’t arguable, Chelsea have got plenty of players who can score the goals, 21 different scorers this season is so varied it is almost funny. We can celebrate this statistic but, in the end, it isn’t really about who, but how many. Next season it must be lifted and two great hopes were blindingly obvious on the field on Sunday.For a brief time we finally had Ben Chilwell and Reece James roaming the flanks again, and turning up in those areas where they terrorised almost every team at the start of the season. It was a heart-warming sight. If you consider how much Liverpool have relied on Andy Robertson and Trent Alexander-Arnold for assists in this campaign, it gives you an idea of what we missed for a large part of the season.Have a look at the position of those two for our winner at the weekend. Reece is at the byline crossing the ball in, and if Ross Barkley doesn’t score, the man right behind him ready to snap up the winner is the returning Chilwell.

Just as importantly, how do you think Mason Mount, Christian Pulisic, Timo Werner and more than anyone, Romelu Lukaku and Kai Havertz, would feel about having that sort of quality service back on tap.Clearly Chelsea are best of the rest behind Man City and Liverpool in terms of points as well as goals scored. The distance behind the Reds in particular is minimal when you look at the score lines between the two teams this season. Somehow however, we need to get another 20 to 25 league goals if we are going to be in the main shoot-out at the end of next season. Is it possible?I think it is. If Reece and Chilly stay fit and on form, that increases the goals that will be scored already, not only from themselves but more importantly their assists. That is not to say the other wing-backs will not be chipping in, but rotations will keep them all fresher.Are Romelu and Kai capable of reaching 20 in a league campaign, having not reached double figures in the Premier League this season? Of course they are, and this is what makes Thomas Tuchel’s job very interesting. He knows Chelsea are third in the league but he also understands there is room for improvement within the group individually and collectively.

The final season tally says that we are world club champions, we finished third in the Premier League, we were FA Cup and Carabao Cup finalists and we were knocked out in the quarter-final of the Champions League. Considering those final three matches all went to extra time, it certainly shows just how close the team came to having an exceptional season.This is not bad at all when we would all agree these have been difficult times. There have been critical injuries, the Covid hangover, and confusion about the ownership amongst other things.This was supposed to be the season when Thomas Tuchel bedded in and started to change things closer to his own ideals, but with everything that has gone on around him, it has been much harder than it should have been. The coming season will hopefully be more straightforward, especially if the ownership saga ends and the squad can be replenished before all the best available players on the market are gone.One who will be going is Toni Rudiger and he will be a big miss. He is one of the best defenders in world football and certainly one of those who rarely, if ever, gets beaten on the ground in a one-to-one battle. He became a cult figure eventually and like most Blues, I wish him and the others who will depart the best of luck going forward, we never forget our own.

As we say goodbye to what was an unforgettable season, for good and for less good reasons, you do look back wistfully at the big moments and there were plenty of them. Havertz scoring to make us world champions was exceptional, but as much as I enjoyed the ball hitting the back of the net, I loved Cesar Azpilicueta’s little scam beforehand, pretending to be the penalty taker to take the pressure off Kai and sending the entire Palmeiras side a fabulous dummy. Top quality from the legend who we all hope will hang around for another year at least.Having said that, for sheer excitement and incredulity it is hard to beat the second leg of the Champions League quarter-final against Real Madrid. To get back from 3-1 down to lead 4-3 in the tie and be 3-0 up on the night would have been one of the greatest nights in the club's history if we could have hung on.

Yes, we went out in extra time, but it showed all the players that as a group anything is possible with effort, belief and a manager like Thomas Tuchel. I still hope that the best is yet to come from Thomas’s reign and I know that considering he has won the Champions League that is asking for a lot, but then those are the demands of football, of a top club, and no doubt the level of the demands the man makes on himself.