Jorginho is a jack of all trades when Chelsea need a master of something

Chelsea and Liverpool have a similar profile of squad balance despite the gap in individual and team quality. Jorginho is valuable via his versatility, but this does not help the Blues solve their specific problems.

Versatility can be a tricky thing. Someone who can do a lot of things reasonably well or better can make themselves useful in a lot of situations. But many situations call for someone who can do one thing extraordinarily well, especially if that person will be surrounded by other people of similarly high capabilities in their respective areas. In those cases, versatility signals inadequacy for every task rather than sufficiency for all.

Chelsea have just such a versatile player in Jorginho. The CIES Football Observatory’s six-factor algorithm determined Jorginho is the Blues’ most valuable player. However, unlike all but one other MVP of a Premier League team, Jorginho was not Chelsea’s best player on any one factor considered by the algorithm.

CIES considers a player’s performance in duels, interceptions, passing, dribbles, chance creation and shots. Chelsea’s leaders in those categories were Fikayo Tomori, N’Golo Kante, Mateo Kovacic, Willian, Christian Pulisic and Tammy Abraham, respectively.

Chelsea and Liverpool were the only two teams in the Premier League to have their MVP not lead the team in any one component. They were also the only two teams in the top 10 of the Premier League to have different leaders for each of the algorithm’s components. At Tottenham, for example, Heung-Min Son led three categories and Jan Vertonghen led two others.

This leads to two facile conclusions: Chelsea and Liverpool are equally well-balanced teams stacked front-to-back with true experts at every position, and Jorginho is on par with Virgil Van Dijk.

Facile, indeed.

CIES’ analyses bolsters the argument my colleague Travis made here on Sunday. Jorginho is not Chelsea’s problem. He is a useful and productive member of the side, one who is better suited to some opponents and tactical set-ups than others, but is rarely (especially under Frank Lampard) completely out of place. He may not be winning games, but he is not losing them.

But he is also not the solution. Chelsea have many specific, easily identifiable needs. Jorginho, for all his versatility, cannot cover any of them sufficiently for them to go away.

If a club needs an all-purpose, good-to-above-average midfielder, Jorginho is it. But very few clubs need such a player these days.

Clubs at the top of the table, in particular, look for players who can do a lot well, but can do one thing superlatively well. Of the players Chelsea have – especially in midfield – each excels in one or two aspects of the game. Mateo Kovacic and N’Golo Kante lead a category, as a result. If there was a measure of movement between the lines to open up spaces, Mason Mount would lead that. Depending on where you want to draw the line between attacking midfielders and wingers in Frank Lampard’s 4-3-3 / 4-2-3-1, it’s no surprise to see Christian Pulisic and Willian each topping a category, as well. Kante is the only player who would lead his category at just about any team in Europe, but the others all have their defining characteristic for Chelsea.

Each of those midfielders are behind each other on some measure and ahead on others. On some they are better than Jorginho, on some they are worse. None of them are better than Jorginho at everything, but Jorginho is not better than each of them at any one thing, and that makes him a difficult figure for a coach to work into the squad.

In a slightly paradoxical way, Jorginho comes off looking worse as the MVP because he does not lead any of the components. If he was not on the list at all, we could speculate if he was second-best on any one measure and far down the scale on the others. This would at least signify that he has that one defining ability that speaks to the precise need he fills in a squad, and that there is simply someone a little bit better than him at that ability currently at Chelsea. That would show the role he could play if necessary at Chelsea; where he and the coaches can focus their efforts to push him up into that top spot; or what could make him more attractive on the transfer market.

But by leading overall without leading any one component, the analyses confirm what we have seen for one and a half seasons now. He is not a midtable reject, but he is also not the second coming of Andrea Pirlo, or Sergio Busquets, or Xavi or any other household name.

It also confirms that Chelsea will continue to have needs that will go unfulfilled with this current squad, even with such a versatile player, because versatility is not enough to solve the specific problems flummoxing the manager.