Here are the numbers that show how and why... 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.
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.
Chelsea have averaged 62 per cent possession in their last nine league matches, compared to 57 per cent across the first 16.
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.
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.
