Stats show Chelsea’s new centre back would be their highest rated this season | OneFootball

It was announced this afternoon that Trevoh Chalobah has had his loan at Crystal Palace terminated, and will return to Chelsea immediately.

David Ornstein’s Tweet on the matter reported that the defender would return to be an “important player” for the Blues, which makes sense. He never should have left in the first place. He was our best defender last season once he had returned from injury, and the decision to loan him out and sign Tosin Adarabioyo on a free never made much sense to us.

Perhaps it was necessary for some sort of FFP or PSR calculation – in that case, the mistake was getting into that mess in the first place. This recall shows what an error the sporting structure made, and the stats back that up.

Stats show Chelsea underestimated Chalobah once again

Chalobah in action against Brentford.

The defender has made 12 appearances for Crystal Palace this season at centre back, and has a rating in Premier League games of 6.92. That’s despite the fact that Palace are seriously struggling and currently sit in 15th. Chalobah is so good he’s able to pick up good ratings in a bad team.

According to the numbers, there’s nobody in Chelsea’s back line playing nearly as well. Our closest player by rating is Wesley Fofana, way back on 6.75. And he’s going to miss most of the rest of the season.

Our other options – Levi Colwill (6.71), Tosin Adarabioyo (6.66), Benoit Badiashile (6.52), Axel Disasi (6.50) and Josh Acheampong (6.02) are all miles behind.

So Chalobah should have a great chance of getting straight back into the team where he should have been all along. He