How legitimate is Chelsea's threat to the Premier League crown?
As things stand, the Blues are only two points off the Premier League's top spot and are starting to be discussed as genuine title contenders this season
Hello you, how’s it going?
It’s David here, and today we’re talking about Chelsea. I won’t say any more here because, well, y’know, I have written a fair few words on them below. So take a look.
Oh, and don’t forget, if you like the newsletter, please do consider signing up and sharing it with others. Also, you can support us by supporting our sponsors.
Although we’re still in the early stages of this Premier League season, relatively speaking at least, it does seem as though we’ve got a genuine title race on our hands.
This is a welcome sight for most Premier League spectators after last year’s campaign saw Liverpool stroll pretty much unopposed towards their crown as England’s new champions.
Although you wouldn’t have heard many complaints about this from Liverpool fans from around the globe, there may just be a section of Reds supporters who would welcome the thrill and emotion of a tightly contested title race this time around.
So far most teams have played 11 matches, and as things stand, the top three of Tottenham, Liverpool and Chelsea are separated by just two points. Last season after the same number of matches, there was a gap of eight points between the league’s top three sides.
Interestingly, eight points currently separates 1st from 10th in the English top-flight this term, a sizeable reduction on last season’s gap of 18 points at the same stage. This, along with some of the erratic results we have seen so far, highlights the competitive nature of England’s top tier.
Marginal Pains has partnered with LibertyShield.com - the perfect VPN companion for all your football viewing. If you’re reading this, you get 20% OFF everything using coupon code MARGINAL20.
We can likely assume with some certainty that come the end of the season, Liverpool will be in and around the division’s top three teams again, whilst Manchester City, who are currently playing catch up after an unremarkable start, will probably be up there too.
Many see José Mourhino’s Tottenham as the major threat to breaking up this era of dominance led by City and Liverpool given their fast-paced start, however, there’s a case to be made that their London rivals Chelsea are perhaps the side best suited to do so.
We know the Blues invested heavily in the summer, spending no less than £220m on a plethora of players that as individuals would have most likely become the marquee signing of the summer at another club.
Yet from a list of names including Kai Havertz, Timo Werner, Ben Chilwell, Hakim Ziyech, Edouard Mendy and Thiago Silva, a case could really be made for each as Chelsea’s best piece of business.
Despite an excellent window, there was a sense that these new recruits would require some form of a bedding-in period before we would see them at their best and as a result, consider Chelsea as legitimate Premier League contenders.
This notion was reaffirmed by the fact that Frank Lampard’s side looked fairly disjointed, to begin with and won just two of their opening six PL matches. That sequence included a 2-0 home defeat to Liverpool, a loss that felt revealing in terms of their potential title-chasing credentials - even if they did go down to ten men before half-time.
However, since their goalless draw at Old Trafford in gameweek six, Chelsea have gone onto win five of their following six league matches, dropping points only to high flying Spurs in a 0-0 draw. This run of results looks good on paper and has caused a fair few people to sit up and take note.
But whilst the results are looking good, what are the underlying performance indicators telling us about the Blues?
In terms of shots generated per 90, Lampard’s side rank 5th with an average of 14.1, but impressively 2nd in terms of shots on target. Additionally, their combined non-penalty Expected Goals (NPxG) total of 16.6 is the third-best in the league behind only Leeds and Liverpool. Although, they actually jump to second when we look at Post-shot xG (PSxG), illustrating the benefits of having clinical forwards in the final third.
These attacking numbers are good, but frankly, they’re not that dissimilar to the numbers they were posting last season, certainly from an output perspective.
Their real Achilles heel in the last campaign came at the other end of the pitch. Despite having the fourth-best Expected Goals Against (xGA) total in the division, Chelsea’s total of 54 goals conceded was the eight-highest in the league!
In a team game like football, it’s very rare that fault falls at the feet of just one player. However, it’s really difficult to not apportion a large amount of the blame towards goalkeeper Kepa for that high goals-against tally from last season. He had the worst save percentage in the division and was actually roughly conceding a goal for every two shots he faced.
Even this season, the Spanish international’s six league goals conceded is three times that of Mendy’s total goals against tally, despite the fact that the former Reims keeper has played over twice as many matches.
With Kepa now finally relegated to the bench, which you’d imagine is only a stop-gap before being shown the door next year, those goalkeeping horror shows now look set to be a thing of the past for Lampard’s side.
Their recruitment of Mendy in the summer does draw some parallels with how Liverpool brought in Alisson to launch them from top-four hopefuls into genuine title contenders. The Merseysiders had been on an upward trajectory ever since Jürgen Klopp arrived at the club, however, a lack of quality in between the sticks would often stunt their progression at key stages.
Around the same time, the Reds also brought in the colossal Virgil Van Dijk to add a further level of security to their backline. Obviously, there are very few out there who can match up to the Dutchman, yet, Chelsea’s acquisition of Thiago Silva was a very shrewd short term solution.
His signing has simultaneously improved them this season whilst also bestowing them a season-long window in which to extensively scout out a more long term candidate to make a move for next summer.
Chelsea’s overall recruitment in the summer may have looked excessive at the time, however, it’s going to quite possibly be the difference-maker for them when it comes to fighting for the title this season.
Jamie Carragher made reference to it on Sky Sports’ Monday Night Football show and the two below visualisations really highlight the quality of reinforcements they now have in almost every position… well barring the keeper of course.
This feels a more crucial advantage this season than in any other. That’s because, in this campaign, most top teams are fighting against a congested fixture list spanning across multiple competitions as the impact of COVID continues to loiter.
The consequence of this hectic schedule is that players are struggling to meet the physical demands of playing matches every two or three days and starting 11’s are being decimated with injuries.
As a result, this season will likely be less about who has the best starting 11 or 12 players, and instead about who has the better players waiting in reserve.
This does play into the hands of Lampard who should be able to replace and rotate within his team without there being a huge drop-off in terms of the on the pitch performances. Therefore, to answer the original question: How legitimate is Chelsea's threat to the Premier League crown? I’d say, very.
You’ve heard of pass the pod, right? Well, let’s do pass the newsletter. If you know someone who might like this, please do share. You can also find us on Twitter - @SamMcGuire90 and @DAHughes_