Graham Potter in today’s press conference admits he wants Chelsea to create chances with more consistency, despite Chelsea’s high XG (expected goals) against Borussia Dortmund.
Potter did not agree with The Athletic journalist Simon Johnson’s opinion on Chelsea creating chances regularly, instead insisting they need to be more regular and the way we create chances needs to improve.
Chelsea’s head coach is working on all of this but did not reveal to Simon Johnson if they are doing extra specific attacking drills at Cobham.
Chelsea really need a win, Graham Potter really needs a win, the current run is one of the worst in Chelsea’s long history with 2 wins in 14 matches.
Southampton tomorrow presents the best possible opportunity for the Blues to get 3 points and build momentum ahead of the Spurs fixture next week. The Saints sit dead last in the table and are without a manager for the game tomorrow.
Potter: “Our XG was quite high against Dortmund but generally we want to create more chances and then you back the players at the top end of the pitch to score”
— Pys (@CFCPys) February 17, 2023
I agree with Potter to an extent. According to FBRef, Dortmund was only the fourth match all season—the others were Milan (Oct 11), Zagreb (Nov 2), Fulham (Jan 12)—that we managed more than 2.0 xG. During the same time period, Man City has achieved +2.0 xG sixteen times! Arsenal fourteen times. Utd eleven times. In other words, xG are not actual goals, but it’s a pretty good proxy. So, yeah, Potter is definitely right that we want to see a lot more of the quality shot creation we witnessed at Dortmund. AND…
The part he doesn’t quite acknowledge is the conversion of xG to actual goals. According to FBRef we’re approximately -5 goals (expected goals versus actual goals) for the season. By contrast, Utd are +16! That means we’ve done a pretty poor job of converting statistically strong positions into goals, and a club like Utd is vastly over-performing when it comes to creating something out of nothing. This, of course, speaks to our lack of a true finisher at the 9 (or, really, anywhere in the squad). And that’s something that increased xG will only make more and more obvious if we continue the trend we saw at Dortmund of creating good chances but failing to capitalize.