There’s no good case for bringing Cristiano Ronaldo to Chelsea
“But he’d score goals”. Yeah let’s talk about that. Goals, you say. Yes, Ronaldo may score goals, but who else will? How does the team perform as a whole with Ronaldo on the team since he became an out and out center forward? There’s a case to be made that while Ronaldo himself will score goals, he’d likely be the only one doing so, and as a result the team tends to perform worse in the long run as a whole. “That’s nonsense, no way that’s his fault, that’s just his teammates not pulling their weight”, before you go that route, look at the numbers.
In the 2017-18 league season Ronaldo was still at Real Madrid. Juventus scored 86 league goals that season and won 95 points, winning the league. The following season (2018-19), the great No. 7 joined Juventus. In the 2018-19 season Ronaldo himself scored 21 league goals but Juventus scored 70 league goals and finished the season with 90 points. In the season after that (2019-20), Ronaldo himself scored 31 league goals in 33 starts, Juventus, though, scored 76 league goals, finishing the season with 83 points.
Juve still won the league, but just barely, as they finished the season just one point clear of Inter who was hot on their trail. In Ronaldo’s last season in Italy, he scored 29 league goals in 31 starts, but Juventus scored 77 league goals, finishing the season with 78 points, and this time only enough to win 4th place in the league. Yes, in the 2020-21 season Atalanta, Napoli and Inter all outscored a team with Ronaldo in it. See a pattern yet?
Juventus never hit the 86 league goals they did before Ronaldo arrived. Why? It could be because you cannot just plug the Portuguese into any team and they continue to function as normal. Some things have to be moved around. Some things have to be removed altogether. This means that much of what made Juventus able to score 86 goals would have to have changed to maximise Ronaldo’s output. Ronaldo’s goal return did not suffer, but the total goal return and points return of his team did.
“What about Man United?!” Glad you asked: United scored 73 league goals in the 2020-21 season. This was good enough to secure them second place. Never mind the position, they scored 73 goals and won 74 points. In the following season, the legendary No. 7 arrived. Did Manchester United score more or less goals in the 2021-22 season? You guessed right, less. Manchester United scored 57 goals while Ronaldo himself scored 18. Make no mistake, 18 league goals is a very good return for a Premier League striker especially when the golden boot holders went home with 23 goals a piece.