Are the Chelsea attackers being judged too harshly as of late?

Figure 1.5: Percentage of shots on target

Attackers of Liverpool and Manchester City shoot more than Chelsea forwards, but that’s to be expected as they create more chances than the Blues. How good are these shots though? Figure 1.5 shows that Chelsea has some of the best shooters under scrutiny, but also some of the worst. Perhaps that’s because the Blues are the most represented team on this chart.

Hudson-Odoi, Mason Mount and Christian Pulisic all record percentages of shots on target higher than 45 percent of the players under scrutiny. That’s three of the four best shooters on this list. Unfortunately, Havertz, Werner and Ziyech also record the worst percentages of shots on target,. However, these numbers are closer to those of the forwards of the other clubs.

Non-penalty expected goals per 90 (npxG/90) tells us more about the ability of these forwards to put themselves into good goal scoring positions.

Figure 1.6: Non-Penalty xG per 90

Attacking play is extremely difficult to analyze/compare for several teams at the same time because of game state, as well as a multitude of other factors that all play a part in it. This is why it’s much better to use on-the-ball actions to compare.

Chelsea was heavily represented in this study, featuring seven players. This is one more than Manchester City and three more than Liverpool. These numbers show that the Blues are not far off the other clubs in terms of technical quality of the attackers. However, it is clear that Tuchel has way too many options.

Liverpool’s Jurgen Klopp almost always uses Roberto Firmino, Mane and Salah, except when he decides to rotate out Firmino for Jota. Similarly, Pep Guardiola has a recognizable pattern of forwards he starts. Guardiola admittedly rotates a lot more than Klopp. There is still an ongoing debate in the Chelsea fanbase on who the Blues’ ‘best’ front three should be. Klopp has about four or five senior options for three spots in the front line. Guardiola has five senior options, as well. Tuchel, in comparison, has seven. Amongst those seven is a £97.5 million striker, four young, highly-rated talents under the age of 24 and two players in the prime of their careers.

Tuchel needs less options for the three attacking spots in his formation. It does not matter who he sells because almost every one of these Chelsea attackers has a following of people that will be very irritated to see them out of the team. In the end though, it must be done if the Blues are ever going to have any hope of building chemistry and synergy into the attack.

It is normal being envious of Manchester City and Liverpool, but Salah, Mane and Jota have started more than 10 games together this season alone. By comparison, Chelsea used a combination that it had never used before in the game against Manchester City at the Etihad last week. That combination was used again later, but that only increased the count of usage to two. The distribution of minutes shows a clear difference in the way the attackers are being selected.

Conclusion

This study has shown that while some Liverpool and Manchester City attackers have been truly exceptional, a majority of them haven’t been mind-blowing in many key attacking metrics. The formation, supporting personnel, coach’s influence and many other things see that these clubs create quite a lot and also score so much. Why? It’s simple, Liverpool and Manchester City are not where they are right now mainly because of their attackers and neither is Chelsea.

What do you think about Chelsea’s attacking personnel: are they good enough and can the Blues compete for the league title with them? Let us know in the comments or on Twitter!