Chelsea are in the top four where it matters most, despite looking and acting like a bottom-four team in many aspects of the game. Their record on set pieces is equally dismal on offence and defence.
Very little of what Maurizio Sarri imported from Napoli to Chelsea has met expectations, whether we’re talking tactics or personnel. Among the over-promised, under-delivered aspects of Sarriball was Sarri’s celebrated binder of 33 set piece routines (maybe it’s 38. Or 47. 53?). Nathaniel Chalobah talked about it when he was on loan at Napoli under Sarri, and Sarri’s disciples have proclaimed the word for nearly a year now.
Like Sarriball writ large, the Blues have mastered the set piece routines. The issue is not the complexity of the routines or the players implementing them. The routines are simply not very effective, are easily read and defended by the opposition, are a few months (if not years) overdue for updating and have left Chelsea towards the bottom of the table for chances and goals from set pieces.
Chelsea have scored eight goals off 117 shots from set pieces this season. Their shot total is the fourth-lowest in the league. Their goal output is the third-lowest: only Newcastle and Fulham have scored fewer goals, and Southampton and Crystal Palace have the same amount. Manchester City only has nine, but the rest of the top six teams all have 12 or more.
Eight goals in 117 shots means Chelsea score on 6.84% of their set pieces. This is the seventh-lowest in the league. However, the Blues’ set piece effectiveness is only a slight bit higher than the bottom team (Fulham, 5.05%), while it is less than half that of Liverpool (13.14%) and Arsenal (16.46%). Manchester United and Tottenham are both about 50% more effective than Sarri’s men.
Things are equally grim on the other side of the ball. Chelsea have conceded 15 goals from set pieces, worst in the league alongside Cardiff. Manchester United and Arsenal have conceded 11 and 10 goals, respectively. The rest of the top six have allowed either seven or eight goals each. This is less surprising, though, since no one has ever talked about any defensive set piece routines in Sarri’s binder.
Combining the poor offensive and defensive stats, you get the set piece differential: goals scored minus goals conceded from set pieces. Chelsea have by far the worse set piece differential: -7. No other top-six team has a negative set piece differential.
In case you think that is just a banter stat that violates my third directive from a few weeks ago, consider this. Tottenham are two points ahead of Chelsea and Arsenal are two points behind, with Manchester United one point behind that. Goal differential could decide the Champions League places next season. Tottenham have an eight-goal advantage over Chelsea on goal difference, while Chelsea have a one goal lead over Arsenal. One or two more free kicks scored or saved (along with not shipping six goals to Manchester City) could determine the success of this campaign.
Chelsea’s game against Eintracht Frankfurt contained two typically risible corner kicks. One was a short corner, which – unsurprisingly – Eintracht Frankfurt read the whole way. The Frankfurt defender was atop Pedro before he even took the short corner from Willian, knocking the ball out for a Chelsea throw but a complete waste of the opportunity to put a ball into the box.
Around the same time, Willian lined up a corner into the box but hit the first man. This is always the most basic admonition: “Don’t hit the first man on a corner kick!” But usually it refers to the first defender on the edge of the box or at the near post. In this case, the defender was standing about 15 yards away from the corner flag as a one-man “wall,” and managed to block the ball.
Sarriball really is a consistent whole, just not the way its fanboys think. The set piece routines are every bit as rote, rigid and programmatic as the circuits in open play. For whatever reason, this is praised as attention to detail and acute planning in the former case, and completely ignored in the latter.
The set piece issue also shows Maurizio Sarri’s emphasis on imposing a superficial style without any regard for the mechanics or motivations that must lie beneath any substantial, successful system. If the players are not attuned to the fundamentals of putting a ball in the box; if they’re not motivated to win first balls and organized to win second balls; if they remain disoriented in their zonal marking; if they are still ordered to be in zonal marking instead of some kind of mixed marking schema, then all the X’s, O’s and arrow’s in the binder are worth nothing more than the paper they are printed on.
Chelsea are still alive in the race for top-four because three other teams are doing their damnedest to keep them on life support. The Blues are overperforming many of their underlying metrics, both on and off the pitch.
That is the definition of an unstable trajectory. With only two Premier League games and likely two Europa League games left, Maurizio Sarri can still wobble across two finish lines. Just don’t let anyone fool you into thinking Chelsea are striding into glory.