Chelsea finished the 2022/23 season in 12th place, a position that was rather surprising considering that they were 5th by Matchday 6 when then-manager Thomas Tuchel was unceremoniously sacked. The Blues’ performances plummeted from there, and they had the shocking results to go with them. These horrendous performances were made that much worse by the fact that the Blues had spent north of £600 million on playing personnel alone, meaning that player quality was not a viable excuse. The results and 12th place finish attracted a lot of deserved attention and criticism toward those responsible for coaching and managing the team.
Chelsea has now spent more than £250 million since the end of that season, yet, four league games into the new season, they find themselves 12th. Again. Does this suggest that the 2022/23 finish was not a coaching issue? Does it suggest that the player clear out that happened this summer was not needed? Or are the results and 12th place position this time down to an entirely different set of factors? Factors point to the latter.
To give a more accurate analysis of this, we need to look more closely “under the hood”. Yes, you guessed right, The Underlying Stats. Last season, CFC was not just bad, they were as bad as they were expected to be. They were not unlucky, they were just abysmal. Last season, according to FBref, the Blues ranked joint 11th for wins, joint 15th for goals scored, 10th for expected goals against (xGA) and 11th for expected goals scored (xG) in the Premier League.
They also ranked 8th for shots per game and joint 11th for non-penalty xG per shot (npxG/Sh). To go into more detail, examining ball movement and chance creation, Boehly’s Blues ranked 10th for big chances gotten. In addition to that, they ranked 8th for Shot Creating Actions and 13th for Goal-Creating Actions. All these combined to produce a deserved 12th-place finish, especially considering that they finished 8% of their shots. To summarize, the Blues’ problem last season was…everything.
This season, Chelsea has gone almost a full 180 degrees in all the metrics mentioned above, metrics which come together to decide where you finish in the table. Last season, it was easy to notice that the Blues’ finishing was quite poor. The Blues didn’t get better finishers in the window though, in fact, they stripped the squad of Christian Pulisic, Romelu Lukaku, and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang: all very good finishers. If you wonder why the finishing was still so poor despite the above-mentioned good finishers, it’s because these guys did not play much. Lukaku played 0 minutes, while Pulisic and Aubameyang played a combined 1,972 minutes in all competitions for the club last season. Lukaku is at AS Roma now, Pulisic is at AC Milan, where he has scored two goals in three games this season, and Aubameyang is at Olympique Marseille.
Examining the club’s position this season, the first thing to note is that it is just four games into the season, and nothing that has happened so far is a real indication of anything substantial. It is also just five competitive games Mauricio Pochettino has managed as a Chelsea manager. In the four league games he has been in the dugout, his men have ranked 1st in average possession per game (66%), according to WhoScored. It’s not just possession without penetration either, as they have gotten the second most big chances (14) in the Premier League this season, behind only Brentford.
The Blues have gotten more big chances than Arsenal, Manchester City, Tottenham, and Manchester United. The former rank 3rd for expected goals from non-penalty shots (npxG). They boast a higher npxG/Sh than Manchester United, Manchester City, Arsenal, Liverpool, and Brighton. These are ultra-positive signs considering that Pochettino is still new as manager of the club.
Chelsea also ranks 3rd for passes completed into the penalty area and 2nd for passes into the final third, as well as ranking third for Shot-Creating Actions. All these show that the Blues are regularly getting into good positions to take shots. There are just two major issues.
The chance creation numbers reveal something that could become important. Chelsea is taking 16.5 shots per game, but are only creating 11.3 of them. This suggests that a relatively significant portion of the shots they’re taking are from errors made by their opponents. This could become worrying because while it is good to be forcing your opponents into errors, for the volume of the ball the Blues control, the volume of passes they make, and the areas they get themselves into, they should have a higher proportion of shots created by their own making.
Manchester City and Brighton so far this season are creating 87% of the shots they’re taking, Manchester United is creating 86% of their own shots and Arsenal is creating 81%, Chelsea is creating 68% of the shots they’re taking. It should be noted that 80% is the ideal number for a club of Chelsea’s stature, and the clubs creating over 85% of their shots probably would not sustain it, but Chelsea has played generally easier fixtures than the above-mentioned teams, and therefore their proportion should be at least on par with Manchester City and Brighton, if not higher. This is something Pochettino needs to keep an eye on, as the team should be creating more of their own shots.
The second, and perhaps more important issue, is that Chelsea’s shot-taking has, again, been extremely poor this season. Chelsea ranks 5th for shots taken, but they rank 13th for shots on target taken, and 18th for the proportion of shots that are on target. This is particularly damning because the west London side is more regularly getting on the end of much better chances than their opponents. Only Brentford has gotten more big chances per game than Chelsea (3.5), and that number is likely to reduce the more games the Blues play.
Once again, Pochettino’s men are converting 8% of their shots, the exact number from last season. They have also missed 11 of the 14 big chances they have gotten this season, including the only penalty they have been awarded. Nicolas Jackson leads the front line but also the whole league in many things, one of which is big chances missed (6). Jackson has accumulated 3.0 npxG, only behind Erling Haaland’s 3.1, yet Haaland has 5 non-penalty goals (npG), and his Senegalese counterpart has 1.
So is there cause for concern? As always the answer is not so clear cut, but yes and no. No, because it’s just five games into the season, and Pochettino’s Chelsea managerial tenure and this Chelsea is not yet where he wants it to be.
Yes, there may be reason for concern, because the Blues are depending on opposition mistakes more than they should need to and also because the shooting is really poor. Can Jackson start finishing his dinner? Unfortunately, no one can answer that yet. There’s a lot for the fans to be excited about, but there’s just as much to be cautious about.