A look back at the stats from Chelsea’s first 8 games of the season shows a team in real trouble.
You can look at the results – three wins, two draws, three losses, you can look at the goals conceded vs. scored, or for a slightly more detailed look at how we’re playing, you can look at the expected goals for and against.
A year ago, Thomas Tuchel’s Blues were racking up North of 2 expected goals per game, and regularly keeping the opposition to below 0.5 expected goals.
This season the difference between the two is tiny, and in one game our opposition has reversed the balance, as Leeds battered us.
We’ve yet to break the 2 xG goal barrier in a game, and on two occasions we’ve allowed more than 1.5 goals against us.
Graham Potter’s task is complex, but it’s also quite simple. Get this team generating more clear cut chances, and stop it giving away so many to the opposition.
I think I pointed this out in a comment 2 weeks when everyone was complaining about Boehly firing Tuchel, lol!
Our offense grew far too predictable under Tuchel and looked even more impotent anytime Reece James wasn’t bombing down the right side (because he was either out injured or stuck at CB). Even against weaker opposition we tend to counter too slowly and once the defense is set with 11 men behind the ball the speed of movement (of both ball and players making runs) is frequently too slow or unimaginative to give our opponent much problem.
In addition, last year we saw several key players underperform in terms of converting expected goals and assists into real ones—most notably Lukaku and Werner. Mount and James were far and away our most productive players as measured by goals + assists – penalties per 90 mins. But guess who was 3rd most effective?
Christian Pulisic (despite a fair number of his minutes coming at RWB and CAM). One has to ask: Why was (and is) our third most productive player (in terms or producing goals and assists per 90 mins) so often left riding the bench?
Check out the numbers here: https://fbref.com/en/squads/cff3d9bb/2021-2022/Chelsea-Stats