Chelsea’s strikers are trailing their peers and could hold back the Blues

Chelsea have one striker who doing everything but scoring, and another who is doing even less than that. Eden Hazard and the others cannot cover for them forever.

Chelsea are sitting pretty in the top four at the moment and all seems rosy. The team has adapted to Sarrismo much quicker than anticipated and are currently on a nine-game unbeaten run. There are still a few wrinkles to iron out and the defense seems the most obvious. The match against Manchester United highlighted that, but it drew attention to another as well. Once again, there was no goal from either Alvaro Morata nor Olivier Giroud.

Goals from the two senior strikers have been few and far between thus far. Of the Blues’ nine Premier League matches this season, only two have seen goals from either strikers. Both were from Alvaro Morata, in wins against Arsenal and Southampton. That means only two of Chelsea’s 20 goals have come from their frontmen. To put that in perspective, Sergio Aguero alone has six goals, Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang and Alexandre Lacazette have four goals each and Harry Kane has five.

If Maurizio Sarri brings one thing to his team it is the creative freedom for the midfielders and wide forwards. They use short passes to draw the defenders out of position before creating chances for the strikers. Chelsea haven’t floundered in that area. They average 14.2 key passes per game, the second-highest in the league.

The strikers’ struggles for goals are testaments to their inefficiency. Chelsea currently average 18.1 shots per game, with 5.9 of them on target. Both figures are behind only Manchester City. Chelsea’s shot conversion rate of 19%, however, is the same as Bournemouth’s and is behind Leicester City. Arsenal top this category with 25%.

Olivier Giroud hasn’t scored at all this season but he has proven useful in other ways. He is a very capable target man with the ability to bring others into play. He holds up the ball very well and drops deep to receive passes, dragging defenders away to create space for runners from the flanks and midfield. He also creates lots of chances (1.5 key passes per game), and only Benjamin Mendy (5) has more league assists than him (4) this season.

Eden Hazard has benefited greatly from Giroud’s selfless play and has even called him the best target man in the world. That Hazard has scored all of his seven league goals when Giroud is on the pitch is no coincidence. Giroud’s selfless play is the perfect foil for his wing wizardry.

Even with all of his other important qualities, a striker’s currency remains goals. That’s what they are paid to do and that’s how they are eventually judged. In that aspect, Giroud has failed terribly.

Giroud has not scored for the club since May 6, despite taking over from Morata as the club’s first-choice striker. In fact, his last 38 matches in the Premier League has yielded only seven goals. Part of this is he simply doesn’t take enough shots, with his tally of 1.6 per game dwarfed by other elite strikers.

Sure, he went to Russia and came back with the World Cup despite finishing with no goals or even a shot on target. But then the World Cup is only seven games long, and France had Antoine Griezmann and Kylian Mbappe to share the goals. At Chelsea, however, only Eden Hazard has proven to be capable of carrying that burden. But even he can’t do it alone for a 50 odd-game season. He needs help from others, starting with Giroud.

Morata, on the other hand, is everything Giroud is not. He fails to hold up the ball, falls with every slight contact from a defender and doesn’t harry defenders enough. When he eventually has chances, he somehow manages to miss. He has two goals in the league – three in all competitions – but that’s because he’s missed countless other chances. The Europa League epitomized his wastefulness perfectly as his 14 shots over two games yielded only the goal.

His 2.0 shots per game is low for a striker of his ilk. And unlike Giroud, he doesn’t compensate with chances created. His 0.3 key passes per game is relatively poor and he’s yet to register an assist in any competition.

His movements in and around the penalty area are not as good as they were last season. There have been some good crosses into the box, but Morata is never there to apply the required touch. He looks short of confidence and his goals in back-to-back games have done nothing to improve it.

The strikers haven’t scored a lot but goals have been flowing from other parts of the team. Hazard has taken the mantle, but Pedro and the resurgent Ross Barkley have weighed in with a few of their own. There will eventually come a time when they will hit a sticking point and the strikers will be required to dig them out.

Whether they succeed in doing that or not could be the difference between a top-four place and a Premier League trophy come the end of the season.