The alarming Chelsea stats that show why their attack has gone stale | OneFootball

Enzo Maresca’s forward line struggling as Champions League push falters

Chelsea are stuck in a mid-season rut.

After a terrific start to the season that had the Blues as Liverpool’s closest title challengers, Enzo Maresca’s side are now facing a scrap for the Champions League places as the season enters its final third.

You can pinpoint the goalless draw away at Everton on December 22 as the moment the downturn began. Prior to that stage, Chelsea had taken 34 points from 16 Premier League games; since then, it is nine from nine.

Across the course of that run, a once thrilling, dynamic attack has gone stale.

Here are the numbers that show how and why...

Outgunned

Friday night’s 3-0 defeat at Brighton was Chelsea’s most lifeless attacking display of the season, headlined by the fact that they failed to manage a single shot on target (SOT) in a Premier League game for the first time since September 2021.

“The bad feeling is that we look like we can easily concede chances and we struggle to create chances,” Maresca said afterwards, but the second of those issues is by far the more significant.

Over their last nine league games, Chelsea have allowed an average of 4.8 SOTs per game, a small increase on the 4.2 they were giving up in the first 16 matches.

Chelsea failed to manage a single shot on target in Friday’s 3-0 defeat at Brighton

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However, in terms of their own SOTs, there has been a hefty decline, from 5.8 per game to just 4.4.

In other words, Chelsea’s defence has always been relatively generous: there are seven teams in the Premier League who give up fewer than four SOTs in an average game, better than the Blues’s rate even during superb pre-Christmas run.

But where once they were able to outgun teams, now they are actually managing fewer SOTs than opponents themselves.

Expected goals

Such was Chelsea’s attacking threat in the first half of the season that even with their recent drop-off, they still rank second only behind Liverpool for expected goals (xG) across the course of the campaign.

However, no team in the top half of the table has a worse record in terms of xG compared to actual goals scored, suggesting a lack of clinical finishing within Maresca’s forward line.

Again, to anyone who has watched Chelsea over a long period, that will come as no surprise. But, again, it is a weakness that the Blues were able to overcome at their best and one that is causing them problems now.

The statistics for individual matches make that clear. When creativity is in short supply, ruthlessness becomes key, with Nottingham Forest the clearest example in the top-flight. Nuno Espirito Santo’s side rank only 16th in the league for xG but have outperformed that metric in a staggering 15 of their 25 matches. That is a big part of why they sit third.

Chelsea, by contrast, have only outperformed xG in six games - and not in one since their poor run of form began in mid-December.

Style change

Perhaps the biggest frustration among Chelsea supporters has been the obvious shift in their style of play as the season has gone on, with Maresca pushing for more patient build-up and more control.

The numbers suggest he has been successful in orchestrating that change. Chelsea have averaged 62 per cent possession in their last nine league matches, compared to 57 per cent across the first 16.

Maresca has given up some of Chelsea’s strength in transition

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The weekend’s Brighton defeat saw Chelsea attempt a season-high 776 passes, more than 350 more than in the 4-2 win over the same side at Stamford Bridge in September.

But in implementing that style, Maresca has clearly given up some of Chelsea’s strength in transition and opponents are now setting up to frustrate, knowing the Blues are struggling to break defences down.

Along with Brighton last week, the matches in which Chelsea completed most passes - away to Ipswich and Everton in December - also saw them fail to score.

Palmer crowded out

Injuries in Maresca’s forward line have clearly amplified the problem over the last fortnight, and with Nicolas Jackson, Marc Guiu and Noni Madueke all sidelined with hamstring issues, the situation does not look set to improve any time soon.

Of those players, Jackson is the biggest miss. Though hardly a prolific finisher - he had not scored in eight league games when picking up his injury, the longest drought of his Blues career – Jackson opens games up with his ability to mix close link play with defence-stretching runs in behind.

His absence clearly hindered Cole Palmer in a crowded front-third against Brighton last week. Though traditionally you might think of Palmer as the creative provider to Jackson at centre-forward, that relationship has actually been more prolific in reverse this season, with Jackson assisting four of Palmer’s league goals.

Only Savinho to Erling Haaland and Jacob Murphy to Alexander Isak have yielded more.

Midfield output

With Chelsea’s attack misfiring, ordinarily one might be looking to midfield for support, but Maresca’s first-choice pair do not pose a natural goal threat.

Moises Caicedo is a holding player and an overworked one at that (no midfielder in the Premier League has played more minutes this season), with just one goal to his name this term.

Chelsea’s four goals from midfield is one of the worst in the Premier League

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Enzo Fernandez has far more attacking licence, but still only three goals. It is no coincidence that they - along with all four of the Argentine’s league assists - came during a single, six-game purple patch that drove Chelsea’s best run of the season: a 1-1 draw with Arsenal in November followed by five straight victories.

Either side of that, attacking output from midfield has been almost non-existent, with back-ups Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall and Romeo Lavia (who is injured anyway) both yet to score in the league.

The stats website Transfermarkt officially categorises Palmer as a midfielder, but were you to push the Englishman into the forward category, Chelsea’s four goals from midfield would be the joint-worst in the division, alongside Ipswich, Crystal Palace and Brentford.