Chelsea’s finishing masks underlying issues ahead of Manchester United visit
Chelsea host Manchester United at Stamford Bridge on Saturday in the Premier League after Opta’s expected points model rated Chelsea below their visitors this season; Chelsea sit fifth in the table while Manchester United are fifth-bottom.
Opta’s data places Chelsea as the 12th-best team in the division despite their current league position, and the club’s ascent to fifth has relied heavily on an unusually high finishing rate. Chelsea have scored 6.7 more goals than the quality of their chances implies they deserved this season, a figure second only to Brighton on 6.8 (or above Brighton if penalties are excluded), and they produced five goals from 10 shots in the win over Bournemouth — an occurrence that happens less than once a season in the Premier League.
Individual outputs have driven much of that overperformance. Jordan Henderson has scored twice from five shots outside the box after previously finding the net once every 20 long-range efforts between 2014 and last season; Pedro Neto’s three league goals sit two shy of his career best for a single Premier League campaign; Morgan Rogers is ahead of his expected goals by 1.87 compared with a 3.15 advantage across last season.
Adding João Pedro increases Chelsea’s tally of players exceeding non-penalty xG by at least 1.5 to four of the 12 in the Premier League this season, and the two league games he missed — against Brentford and Tottenham — were the only matches in which Chelsea failed to score, producing a combined 1.3 expected goals in those fixtures. Gradient Sports data shows João Pedro has had possession in the opposition penalty area 5.7 times per 90 minutes this season, the most among centre-forwards with at least 400 minutes; Estêvão Willian’s comparable figure is 5.8 since joining Chelsea.
Chelsea’s activity inside the opposition box has declined since a strong start: they fell from third in the division for opposition box touches after four matches to eighth, and Premier League home teams average 27 touches per match in the box while Chelsea recorded 17 in their previous two home games at Stamford Bridge. The club’s overall possession average of 46.5% is markedly lower than in recent campaigns, and Alonso has overseen three league matches in which Chelsea recorded a maximum 38% possession compared with four such games during almost three years at Leverkusen.
Those possession figures do not appear solely driven by game state. Chelsea had 40.8% possession at the point they led 3-1 at Fulham and 34.6% thereafter, and they reached a 3-0 lead against Brighton despite attempting 28.4% of the total passes to that point; by contrast Alonso’s Leverkusen side topped the German possession standings with 61.8%. “You want to have possession,” Alonso said. “Knowing the context, knowing what we are building, I think that we have room for improvement in that part. We need to play more confidently with the ball.”
Tactical rotations and personnel changes have been frequent: Alonso has used 3-4-3 and 4-2-3-1 without deploying either system for more than three consecutive league games, and only Tottenham have averaged more changes to their starting XI from game to game in the Premier League (and this with neither side having to rotate owing to European commitments). Chelsea have started three different goalkeepers this season, recalling the 1996-97 season when Craig Forrest, Kevin Hitchcock, Nick Colgan, Frode Grodås and Dmitri Kharine all made appearances between the sticks, and the club has the second-worst rate in the division for conceding over their expected goal level.
Michael Carrick will arrive at Stamford Bridge on Saturday with his Manchester United side preparing to face Chelsea in the Premier League; much remains unresolved at Stamford Bridge and the fixture will come with questions to answer about Alonso’s team.