Pep Guardiola's move to Bayern puts Rafa Benitez in stronger position at Chelsea, says Jeff Stelling

Rafa Benitez may well have gone home and had a glass of champagne or Rioja last night despite Chelsea's 2-2 draw with Southampton.

I don't think there are many rays of hope for Chelsea at the moment but Demba Ba has had a terrific start, but as he proved at Newcastle he is a good player. Unfortunately for Chelsea it takes more than that to make a team and at the moment Chelsea are desperately vulnerable defensively and I'm not convinced they've got the balance or blend right in midfield either; they still lack a Michael Essien-type figure and it's hurting them. I'm still disappointed with Eden Hazard's general contribution and I'm not convinced that he, Oscar and Juan Mata can play together. So Chelsea still have a long way to go and the chances of them catching either of the top two are pretty remote.

Jeff's Gem of the Week

The city of Bristol is having a tough time of it at the moment with both City and Rovers struggling, so I'm picking Bristol Rovers' victory at Fleetwood. Bristol had won one of their previous 20 games going into the match, while Fleetwood have settled into the Football League pretty well. They were in the play-off places going into that game but Rovers came away with a 3-0 win, which was a fantastic effort. Mark McGhee, a friend of Soccer Saturday, struggled manfully with Rovers without much success; John Ward is the new man in charge, and he's immediately used a load of his contacts to bring in a posse of loan players and suddenly there's hope in January where there didn't seem any in December.