Chelsea: Antonio Rudiger lifts Blues’ centreback goals towards normal levels

Antonio Rudiger trebled the offensive output from Chelsea’s centreback corps with his brace against Leicester City. He brought the Blues temporarily closer to the norm for goals from centrebacks.

For those of you who like to compare what you can expect to what you actually get, Antonio Rudiger has Chelsea’s lowest expected goal contribution across the entire season: .4 expected goals and .3 expected assists. Of the players with an xG below .5 (Rudiger, Reece James, Marcos Alonso and Andreas Christensen) Rudiger was one of only two to have neither a goal nor an assist in the Premier League this season. Andreas Christensen, who has yet to score a first-team goal for Chelsea as he approaches 100 games as a Blue, was the other.

By scoring both Chelsea goals against Leicester City, Rudiger has brought his 2019/20 output up to the level of his career best: two goals, a feat he has now managed in all three leagues he has played in. If he can break his personal best, he may be able to keep Chelsea from a having a record-low season of goal output from their centrebacks.

Fikayo Tomori was the only centreback to score this season before Saturday. His goal represented 2.4% of Chelsea’s Premier League productivity to that point.

Over the past 10 seasons, the Blues have had only two league campaigns where the centrebacks accounted for <5% of the goals: 2009/10 and 2017/18. Those seasons saw the fewest number of centreback goals (4 and 3, respectively), but the 2009/10 percentage was greatly skewed by the total goal output: a club record 103.

In that same span, Chelsea had five seasons where the centrebacks scored over 10% of the team’s goals.

The two highest seasons in both number and percentage of centreback goals were 2011/12 and 2012/13. Branislav Ivanovic, John Terry, David Luiz and Gary Cahill combined for 25 goals across those two season – nearly one-fifth of the team’s goals.

Over the last decade, Chelsea’s most offensively potent centrebacks were those whose reputations ran in the other direction. John Terry scored six goals in 2011/12. Five years later, Cahill became the only other centreback to score six goals for the Blues in a Premier League season. Ivanovic led the centreback battery in scoring in four seasons. None of them are anyone’s idea of the modern, versatile, ball-playing, overlapping or any other buzzword du jour type of centreback.

Most of their goals – particularly Terry’s and Cahill’s – came from set pieces. Neither were the type to push up towards the box during open play. They were old-school defenders who understood that that meant their job was to defend. The further forward they went and the longer they stayed there, the more the were neglecting their primary responsibility to the team.

Chelsea have not replaced the offensive contribution of those dinosaur defenders. The centreback goal output over the last two seasons and the current season – the post-Terry and post-Cahill era – are the lowest of the past decade.

Antonio Rudiger’s style of play fits more with the defence-first centrebacks who the Blues could traditionally count on for more goals. Over the last month he and Andreas Christensen have been coming further forward on set pieces.

At least on paper they should offer more in those situations than their diminutive teammates in midfield, who tend to cover the deep areas while the centrebacks occupy the box. However, neither the expected nor actual stats bear that out. The two have combined for 12 shots all season, one more than Kurt Zouma has on his own. And their execution is, obviously, even dimmer. Christensen, for example, missed a clear header from the edge of the six-yard box against Arsenal.

Rudiger’s brace will most likely represent a short-lived pop towards the mean of Chelsea’s centreback goal output. Aside from positioning, nothing much in any of the centrebacks’ style of play or individual performances hint at a latent offensive threat. Perhaps Rudiger will make himself more of a target on set pieces and Chelsea’s takers may aim at him more regularly, but – like the forwards – it’s not the creation but the finishing that is stymieing this squad.

When two players at the same position are underperforming a season-long 0.4 xG, several things need to be addressed.

The Blues have been counting far too much on Tammy Abraham for their goals this season and, more generally, on the forwards. Just as teams need to be able to score ugly, clumsy and “lucky” goals if they are going to challenge for top four or the title, they also need goals from all of their positions. In any given game, they should not count on anyone to score. But over the course of a season they should be able to count on everyone – centreback to striker – to chip in.

Those unpredictable goals, the ones that relieve the pressure on the full-time goal scorers, are what allow teams to sneak points that they may not otherwise get, as the Blues did at King Power Stadium.

And over 38 games and three other competitions, the cumulative effect of those goals could be a few places in the table or a few more rounds in the cups.