Old and busted: Did you even watch Napoli last season? New hotness: These out-of-context stats tell you everything you need to know about Chelsea.
By this point, even those of us who did not watch Napoli last season feel like we did since we’ve spent the last eight months hearing about it. It was the most fluid, aesthetically-pleasing, entertaining brand of football ever to place to second. None of those words much apply to Chelsea in 2018/19, though, despite the xenotransplantation of Sarriball.
But that’s OK! The important thing now is not to get too hung up on comparing the artistic elements of Maurizio Sarri’s two teams – even if those are the whole reason some Chelsea fans wanted him. Instead, shift your focus to some narrow points of statistical dominance.
Unsurprisingly, given the subject and the speakers, Sarri’s defenders ride data to Jorginho’s aid. The r*****a par excellence led the Premier League in passing, with 3,118 passes. The Metronome was merely the outstanding figure on a team that showed what it truly means to control the game. Four Blues – Jorginho, David Luiz, Antonio Rudiger, Cesar Azpilicueta – are among the top six players in the Premier League for total passes.
Just don’t point out that those four players’ 10,758 combined passes include only seven assists. And certainly don’t reveal your ignorance about r******s by noting that five were from Cesar Azpilicueta and two from David Luiz.
Luiz’s two assists were both through-balls, a category which he led the Premier League with 41. Jorginho was right behind him with 34. Certainly, with over 3,000 passes from a midfield, roughly 10% could be expected to be through-balls. If only Chelsea had better finishers, some of those through-balls would have been actual assists instead of stolen assists.
The finishing, rather than the set up, is probably the reason why Chelsea had the second-most shots and possession but only the sixth-most goals. Strange, though. One would expect the vaunted possession and passing stats to reveal itself in higher quality chances. What’s the point of holding on to the ball for that long if you aren’t using it to take control of the game?
On the other side of the ball, Jorginho trailed only Cesar Azpilicueta in the number of tackles won. He even had more than N’Golo Kante. Clearly, this is quantitative proof that Jorginho is just as defensively capable as N’Golo Kante. Combine this with Jorginho’s superior technical ability, as demonstrated by the aforementioned 3,118 passes, and there should be no further debate over which of the two should be at the base of the midfield.
Please, do not try to muddle this #data-driven #science with observations about their relative positions on the pitch, the flow of play when they make their passes or tackles, or their interplay with each other and the players around them.
The bottom-line stat of the season falls into the same pattern. Chelsea finished third with 72 points. Last year they finished fifth with 71 points. Maurizio Sarri improved the team. End of discussion.
You need to a have certain level of football acumen and intellectual honesty to watch any number of Chelsea’s games this season and claim they are playing better than in past years. That level is low. Sub-basement low.
Having spent the last year telling Sarri skeptics to ignore his lack of trophies and focus instead on the aesthetics of Napoli’s football, Sarri’s village idiots now want us to choose between these cold hard stats and our lyin’ eyes. The worst thing anyone could do is watch Chelsea for 90 minutes at a time, 1-3 times a week, because doing so will make it clear that Chelsea are not playing the beautiful football of Napoli nor the effective football of Chelsea in the past. They will see the inflation of passing and possession stats, the circumstances leading to the team or a player having numerical dominance and the link between that dominance and the tactical failures resulting in the discordant stats.
This all goes back to Sarriball being an exercise in branding, not football. Maurizio Sarri was supposed to introduce Chelsea to a new, fun, exciting style, from which results, well, may or may or may not flow, but did we mention new, fun and exciting? But Chelsea’s style of play was repetitive, turgid and predictable to fan and opponents alike, while the results were somewhere between minimum acceptable and at par.
The season did not deliver one segment of Chelsea fans the results they demand nor did it bring another segment the product they promised and expected. This leaves the latter group grasping for something to show progress and success. Since they cannot point to something qualitative, they seek to shift the conversation to the other camp’s putative terms.
Stats should illuminate and explain what we see when we watch football. Otherwise, they are just numbers picked to prove a point that someone is already failing to make.
Or worse still, you come off looking like these guys.