Chelsea: An apparently necessary defence of Cesar Azpilicueta

Cesar Azpilicueta was the anvil in Chelsea’s three-man strategy to nullify Wilfried Zaha on Sunday. The trio was successful, yet Azpilicueta is coming in for sharp criticism from some rather dull minds.

Cesar Azpilicueta intermittently goes through short spells where he is just a few degrees off his usual impeccable form. Key words: intermittently, short. The opening weeks of this season were one such spell. At different times his positioning, body angles, timing and reading of the game in both directions were off the mark. At worst, he was performing like a run-of-the-mill Premier League-calibre full-back. Like we’ve been saying about N’Golo Kante as a box-to-box midfielder, 80% of Cesar Azpilicueta is still better than 100% of 90% of his peers.

Azpilicueta was his best self against Crystal Palace. He was the anvil and N’Golo Kante was the hammer Chelsea wielded against Wilfried Zaha. Kante drove Zaha where he wanted him to go, and Azpilicueta was there to not let Zaha go any further towards Chelsea’s goal. Pedro, then, was the tongs, coming in at the end to pluck away the ball.

Of the trio, Azpilicueta had the least to show for his day on the stats sheet. Perhaps this is what led to the asininity of the post-game tweets and takes slating him for a poor performance.

Against players like Wilfried Zaha on teams like Crystal Palace, when Chelsea can afford to overload a single opposition forward, Azpilicueta plays the least glamorous role. He is not nipping at Zaha around midfield, shepherding him towards the kill zone. That’s N’Golo Kante. Nor is Azpilicueta the one emerging with the ball to start a counter-attack. That was Pedro. Azpilicueta is the one-on-one man, permitting as many unthreatening dribbles as Zaha wants while denying the Ivorian even a step towards Chelsea’s penalty area.

Throughout his career, the mark of a top Azpilicueta performance is when you barely even know he was there. He can so effectively shut down his side of the pitch that the opponent stops trying to operate there. Through a combination of his dogged marking and clean, successful tackles, Azpilicueta augments his defence with deterrence. The opponent knows there’s only one outcome against him, so they try their luck through the centre or the opposite wing.

This is why Azpilicueta rarely dominates Chelsea’s defensive statistics across a season. Two of the key defensive stats for a full-back are tackles and blocks of various forms. In his six full seasons as a Blue, Azpilicueta has led the squad in tackles only once. He led the team in blocked crosses both years under Antonio Conte (despite being the shortest of the three centre-backs). Last season he led the team in blocked shots. He has never led in blocked passes.

Until this year. Azpilicueta is currently leading Chelsea in all four categories. He has blocked the most shots, the most crosses and the most passes. He is in a three-way tie for the most tackles with N’Golo Kante and Marcos Alonso. So much for the narrative that Marcos Alonso can’t defend.

As for the similarly insipid narrative that Azpilicueta can “only” defend. First off, full-backs are only slightly more multidimensional than centre-backs. A full-back who can “only” defend is still a commendable full-back. In fact if they “only” defend and, as a result, never make mistakes on defence, they should be in the league-wide or Europe-wide best XI.

But that’s not Cesar Azpilicueta. Last season he was tied for the second-most assists on the team, thanks to his link-up with Alvaro Morata. Morata, for what it’s worth, shared the number two spot with six assists of his own.

So for those out there who want to slap a number on everything, Cesar Azpilicueta is having his statistical best season with Chelsea relative to the defensive needs of the club. For those of the numbers-aren’t-everything contingent, numbers have never been everything for Cesar Azpilicueta, anyway. The relative lack of activity on Chelsea’s right this season and the offensive silence of Wilfried Zaha on Sunday testify to Azpilicueta being right where he should be.

For anyone who thinks Azpilicueta does not get forward enough, just ask Alvaro Morata. Better yet, ask Maurizio Sarri. Sarri likes asymmetry between his full-backs, with one going forward and one staying deep. This latter full-back not only covers the defensive wing but also covers the centre. When one of the centre-backs is David Luiz, you should be damned happy Azpilicueta does not spend his time joyriding up the pitch.

And since the Venn diagram (and family tree) for people who believe “Azpilicueta can only defend” and “Alonso can’t defend” is a circle, remember that Alonso, Azpilicueta and Kante all have the same number of tackles this season. Sadly, I can almost see it trending now: “This one stat proves Azpilicueta is as poor on defence as Marcos Alonso.”

To say the criticisms of Cesar Azpilicueta this week are merely bad takes in search of a retweet would be more understated than a top-drawer Azpilicueta defensive performance. Let’s all do our part to deter these effluvial on-rushes. We’d rather not spend our time doing clean-up defence behind these David Luiz’s of the Chels-Twitterverse.