Chelsea striker Alvaro Morata starting to find form again by not looking
By Travis Tyler
After a blistering start, various factors saw Chelsea striker Alvaro Morata’s form fall off a cliff. He appears to have turned a corner by not trying to.
The loss to Tottenham Hotspur will largely be remembered as the day Chelsea finally lost to their rivals at Stamford Bridge. A changing of the guard perhaps. Some may remember the excellence of the first half and dream of what could of been.
But what will get lost in the darkness is the improvement of Alvaro Morata. Injury and other factors saw his form drop off around Christmas. Now, he is fit again and it appears he has figured out how to score once more. Notably, he is doing so without looking to do so.
This may seem like an oxymoron. And in some ways it is. Generally, players do not improve by being passive. But strikers are a different breed and Morata is showing why.
Strikers operate largely on instinct. They make logical and thought out moves of course but the split second decisions needed in front of goal are done without thought. That is what separates good and bad strikers. Bad strikers try to force their way into goal. Good strikers go blank and let their body take control.
Chelsea’s last two Spanish strikres showcase this. Fernando Torres overthought everything. The ball would fall to his feet wide open on goal and the gears would start turning when he needed to shoot. That moment of thought is what often saw him miss or have the ball taken from him.
Diego Costa rarely had moments like that. The ball would come to him and his body was already directing the ball towards goal. This is why it often appeared as though he had a bad hit on the ball. Costa was not thinking of hitting the ball cleanly, he let his body do the work and that made his goals look scrappier than they really were.
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When Morata was in form this season, he was more like Costa. Then he ran into the familiar problem many strikers do during a drought; he started thinking too much. That saw him fluff golden chances that he otherwise could have put in the net.
But in his recent matches, he has reverted to that primal instinct of letting his body do the work. He is still gaming out his movements ahead of time like every player should. But when the ball is coming his way, he is no longer thinking. He is just doing.
Not looking has also extended a bit towards his propensity to look for fouls. When he was off form, he would go down at the mere hint of a foul. Often, he was actually fouled. But Premier League referees let a lot more go compared to their La Liga counterparts.
Against Spurs, he did this too. But it was significantly less than before. At most he went down twice before looking for a foul. That at least shows that he is coming to an understanding of how Premier League refs work. He still has growing pains to go through when looking for fouls but he is getting closer. Didier Drogba and Diego Costa both had to learn the same lesson.
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Morata is growing as a Premier League player. It is always impossible to write a player off after just one season. The Spaniard is growing and appears set to end the season the way he began it; with goal after goal after goal.