Chelsea’s social media pages have been working their way through the members of the squad, pointing out some of the season’s best performers.
There was some surprise to see Conor Gallagher picked out, given the club are trying to sell him rather through the back door.
But also put on display was Djordje Petrovic, with the club calling referring to a great season. We wouldn’t expect anything different from a page whose purpose is to big up the players and their performances rather than provide an objective assessment.
But is it really the case? The stats are not as kind.
A glance at the post-shot expected goals per 90 (basically a measure of whether a keeper saved more or less of the shots against them than would be expected) shows Petrovic comes in at 183rd place in Europe out of 191. That’s unbelievably bad, certainly worse than we thought just from watching him play.
Not only that, he ranks behind his alternate Robert Sanchez, who was pretty disappointing himself in the opening third of the season before getting injured and losing his place.
Plenty more to come – but room to improve
Petrovic is young enough, especially for a goalkeeper, that we can be very hopeful he’s got space to improve quite significantly. It was notable that his play with the ball at his feet got better through the season, for one. But has he really shown the raw materials of a player who could go on to be one of the world’s best in his position? We’re not so sure, although we would never write him off completely after such a short period.
He’s by no means a priority when it comes to being replaced, but equally if a world class keeper with tons of experience is on the market in the next 12 months, we wouldn’t be surprised to see Chelsea in the mix to sign them.
