Chelsea: Three ways from four goals the Blues suffered team-wide failures

2. Chelsea concentrating their scoring in too few players

Two relatively unusual names were on Chelsea’s scoresheet on Tuesday. Jorginho scored his fourth Premier League goal of the season, his third from the spot. Cesar Azpilicueta scored his second for what was briefly the go-ahead goal.

While only these two scored during Chelsea’s 64 minutes of a man advantage, every Chelsea player who took the pitch other than Kepa Arrizabalaga and Mason Mount had at least one shot. Six of those 12 had shots on target. Two of those were long-range efforts: the longer of the two from Antonio Rudiger, who made good contact but sent it almost straight to Bernd Leno; and the shorter from Callum Hudson-Odoi, who was sublime in one-on-one situations and regularly beat Bakary Saka to get into the box, yet could not get a shot on target from closer than 20 yards (it was an excellent shot, though).

Chelsea have 41 league goals, and over half of them are from three players. More unusually and worryingly, only one goal has come from a centreback: Fikayo Tomori’s screamer against Wolves in matchweek five.

Last season Chelsea had four goals from centrebacks, and three in the season before that. But in 2016/17, Gary Cahill scored six. The season before, Chelsea’s worst of the decade, Cahill, Branislav Ivanovic and Kurt Zouma combined for five. The year before (2014/15), John Terry had five, Ivanovic had four and Cahill had one. And so on (look for more on this next month).

While this is a season-long trend, it was evident against Arsenal. Andreas Christensen, who had seven goals in 82 games on loan at Borussia Monchengladbach but has yet to score in 87 Chelsea games, had a free header on the edge of the six yard box off a corner nine minutes into the game. The ball sailed over Antonio Rudiger and came right onto the head of Andreas Christensen, who seemed surprised and scared by the ball being exactly where he should want it to be, and it bounced off his head wide of the net.

Rudiger and Christensen came into Arsenal’s box for nearly every corner or deep free kick, but offered little on the first or second ball other than taking up space. They have done so in their recent stretch of games together. But the pair have 11 shots all season in about the combined number of minutes in which Kurt Zouma has taken 12.

Chelsea historically do better when they have one player scoring a high percentage of the team’s goals (e.g., Eden Hazard, Didier Drogba, Diego Costa). They have that situation now with Tammy Abraham. But in those previous seasons, a significant number of goals came from every position in the XI except for goalkeeper.

If the Blues are going to sacrifice defensive stability by pushing their centrebacks into the box on set pieces or late in a run of possession, they need those centrebacks to create quality shots and score goals. Otherwise, it’s no longer a question of risk and reward, but simply how many goals will be conceded at one end for no recompense at the other.