Chelsea’s 1-0 win falls on the whole team, not just Alvaro Morata

Alvaro Morata is in the wringer for missing seven shots against PAOK. His performance should not exonerate his teammates, who also failed to give Chelsea what should have been a comfortable win.

You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take. On the other hand, trying is the first step towards failure, so if you never try, you can never fail. Somewhere in between those two is a small consolation for Alvaro Morata after taking a single-game career-high seven shots against PAOK and putting none on target. Morata had as many shots on Thursday as Olivier Giroud has had all season.

Chelsea took 22 shots against PAOK, five of which were on target and one of which went in. You won’t hear very much about 66% of the off-target shots or the 80% of the on-target shots that Alexandros Paschalakis neutralized. Both because of the number of his shots and the number on his position, Alvaro Morata is the only Blue being dragged as a result of his performance. But it is a team effort and a team short-coming – if not a failure – to only score one against PAOK.

Remember, Chelsea ran Antonio Conte out of town and replaced him with Maurizio Sarri so the club would not have to endure single-goal wins against mid-table or bottom-half teams. PAOK rank 65th in the UEFA coefficient system, between Leicester City (62nd) and Everton (77th). If you would be satisfied with a 1-0 win away to those clubs in a manner similar to how Chelsea played on Thursday, very well.

PAOK are also one place above FK Qarabag, whom Chelsea defeated 4-0 away in last season’s Champions League campaign. Eden Hazard, Cesc Fabregas, Willian and Pedro combined to make those goals happen. Willian scored twice and assisted twice, Hazard scored once and assisted once, Fabregas scored one and Pedro assisted one.

That was the kind of performance Chelsea needed in Greece. One player wasting seven shots should have been a curious footnote to a match in which defenders, midfielders, wingers and strikers alike found the back of that net, as was the case against Qarabag. The Blues should have been taking target practice against Paschalakis, running up the score to build goal differential and confidence. To their credit, they did take plenty of shots – six more than the club took at this stage last year in Baku. But Morata had good company in the didn’t score category. He should be similarly not alone taking heat today for Chelsea’s lack of clinicality.

Strikers need to score, no two ways about it. But before they can ever score they have to do all the right things to put themselves in a position to score. Alvaro Morata did all those things far better than he did in the four Premier League games he has started this season. And again to their credit, his teammates gave him better service than they did in those games. He did 90% of the job well. Unfortunately the remaining 10% is where momentum, confidence and luck (and poor linesman decisions) have the most effect, and where his evaluations are unduly weighted.

Chelsea should recognize how much Alvaro Morata did right against PAOK. In keeping with the recent evolution of this roles, Morata was the selfish striker and Olivier Giroud was the altruistic striker when he came on in the 81′.

A successful striker has to be a bit selfish and greedy. Harry Kane has a relatively low shot percentage (16%) but he took 40 more shots last season than Mohamed Salah and 90 more than Sergio Aguero. Both Salah and Aguero scored with 22% of their shots, so Kane’s willingness to fire is what put him in contention for the Golden Boot and kept him so far above Aguero.

If, last season, Alvaro Morata had taken twice as many shots as he actually did on his same shooting percentage, he would have finished with more goals than Aguero and still fewer shots than Kane. And in so doing Chelsea would have been back to having a 20-goal scorer. The Blues are better off with Morata going 0/7 than 0/2. The latter would be a sign of a much more serious problem, both with Morata and the overall tactics.

Chelsea needed more goals from everybody. The team is in a dangerous place when their goals are concentrated in a few players up top. They cannot rely on Eden Hazard for all or most of their Premier League goals. They cannot rely on penalties and own goals to eke out wins at Newcastle. nor should they need their striker to give them a two-goal margin against PAOK.

Alvaro Morata certainly should have scored in Greece. But so should plenty of other men in Blue.