Chelsea are struggling in the new world of the Premier League.
It’s all turned into the NFL without anyone realising. It’s defending and scoring from set pieces which is the meta now, and the Blues are scrambling to keep up. Their numbers from the dead ball have improved this year, and they’ve got a well regarded specialist coach. But they don’t have the army of aerial beasts that teams like Arsenal do.
Chelsea need more power in the air through the team
They conceded a long throw to Sunderland on Saturday, then lost the game after showing some hesitant defending that you wouldn’t get from any of the players available to Mikel Arteta.
A look at the top 10 players in the league by percentage of aerial duels won shows the Blues have just one – young defender Josh Acheampong, who actually managed to get his head on the throw, but didn’t react quick enough after clearing the ball.
He’s still clearly a good option there though. Tosin wins 3.2 aerial duels per game, the 15th in the league. We can’t have our best centre back outside the top 10. With time, Acheampong could break that list.
And perhaps he can be a player ready for this brave new world in the Premier League. Certainly our transfer target this summer should include more players who can really compete aerially. We’ve got some mean set pieces takers and a good coach – now let’s get some scary presences attacking the posts.
In other news…
We wrote about the Blues creativity crisis here. They have nobody in the top 15 of chances created, and it’s a clear weakness.
It’s a more general problem defensively too – the more stats we get from this season as we play more games, the more obvious the negative trend is.
Live Comments
Welcome to our Live Comments section, where new comments will appear automatically
Add a Comment