Do stats show Chelsea have performed better than people think?

Alex Keble analyses the stats to show why Chelsea are heading in the right direction and can look forward to the 2024/25 season.

Chelsea thrashed West Ham United 5-0 last weekend and moved above Manchester United into seventh, prompting many pundits to declare that the Mauricio Pochettino project is finally starting to move in the right direction.

The race for Europe

Position Pos	Club	Played Pl	GD	Points Pts
5	Spurs TOT	38	+13	66
6	Chelsea CHE	38	+14	63
7	Newcastle NEW	38	+23	60
8	Man Utd MUN	38	-1	60
9	West Ham WHU	38	-14	52

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They are wrong. It has been moving in the right direction since August.

That might sounds like a strange take on a long and challenging first year in the job for Pochettino. But in a results-driven industry we often fail to spot progress unless there are scorelines to match, and beneath the surface Chelsea have been on track for most of 2023/24.

Yes, really.

Over the last fortnight, pundits have been scrambling to understand how Chelsea have convincingly beaten Tottenham Hotspur and West Ham, seemingly out of nowhere, with many even drawing the conclusion that Enzo Fernandez’s absence explains it.

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Instead, what is happening is a progression to the mean; results finally starting to match performances between the two boxes and a young team – prone to wild mood swings, leading to big dips in form – finally gelling.

There was a time when Premier League managers were given 12 months to get their ideas across, a free-hit transitional year. Pochettino, if we look beyond the results, has made great use of his.

Here’s why Chelsea can look forward to a more successful 2024/25.

xPoints table have consistently put Chelsea in top four

Opta’s Expected Points (xPoints) table, which is calculated by simulating each match 10,000 times using the Expected Goals (xG) value of every shot taken, reveals that Chelsea would be fourth – in the final UEFA Champions League spot – had they scored and conceded in line with xG.

Expected Points table 23/24

This is hugely significant. It tells us that Chelsea have regularly been the better team in their matches – creating more chances, conceding fewer – but have been let down by defensive issues and profligacy in front of goal, two issues that should be cleared up next season, as we will show.

It’s important to note this is not a new trend. Throughout 2023/24 Chelsea have hovered in fourth or fifth in the xPoints table, and almost never more than three xPoints short of that fourth spot.

Chelsea xPoints/position 23/24

Unsurprisingly, as the season has gone on, Chelsea are beginning to climb towards their underlying numbers.

They have lost just one of their last 12 Premier League matches and are fifth in the table on 2024 form.

PL table since 1 Jan

Stats reveal Pochettino’s tactics are working between the boxes

How do we explain Chelsea’s xPoints performance? In short, Pochettino’s tactical ideas have very much been taken on board… between the two boxes, that is.

Again, you might need convincing. There have certainly been periods of the season when Chelsea have played badly – as Pochettino has admitted – but this is explained primarily by the low confidence that comes from poor results, particularly for a young squad just getting to know each other.

But the hallmarks of Pochettino football, inspired by the straight lines of Marcelo Bielsa, have been present throughout the season.

They have been: pressing hard; playing sharp vertical football through the lines; dribbling directly at the opposition; and deploying an aggressive high line.

Chelsea top the charts for through-balls played, with 107. They rank second for attempted take-ons (782) and third for successful take-ons (358). They are also fourth for progressive carries (810) and have been caught offside the fourth-most times (83).

In other words, they are top four on the kind of metrics you would expect from a Bielsa-style team aiming, for now, to get back into the Champions League.

It’s a similar story defensively. Chelsea have the fifth-best passes per defensive action (10.7) and have made the sixth-most high turnovers (323). They are front-foot defenders and aggressive, too, hence why they have committed 419 fouls, the sixth-most in the division.

And this all passes the eye test. Watch a Chelsea match and they look like a Pochettino side, often progressing the ball up the pitch and defending from the front coherently - only for mistakes in both boxes to let them down.

Let’s look at why that’s happening and why it might soon be fixed.

Chelsea’s goalscoring issues are behind them

Everybody knows Chelsea have struggled to put the ball in the back of the net.

As recently as 9 February, when we last took a look at Chelsea, their goals-minus-expected-goals figure was -7.8, the second-worst in the division behind Everton.

At the time they had an xG of 43.9, which was higher even than Manchester City’s 43.6, and yet Nicolas Jackson’s poor finishing let them down.

He is still the third-worst performer in the Premier League for goals minus expected goals, on -4.1, but he is trending upwards all the time – as are Chelsea.

Since the beginning of March, Jackson has scored six Premier League goals from an xG of 5.9, or -0.1, while Cole Palmer (+3.8) and Noni Madueke (+2.6) have helped redress the balance for the club.

Chelsea have overhit their xG in six of their last seven Premier League matches.

In other words, their goalscoring problems are a thing of the past, thanks mostly to Jackson maturing and developing and the front line clicking into place.

In even better news for Chelsea fans, from next season Christopher Nkunku - who scored 36 goals in 59 Bundesliga matches in his last two seasons at RB Leipzig - should be back for 2024/25, significantly bolstering their penalty-box prowess.

Injuries explain defensive issues – and here the future looks bright

To understand why Chelsea have conceded so many goals – 59, the ninth-most in the division, from an xG of 53.1 – we again return to this being a young team who have had extraordinary turnover in the last year.

That, coupled with injuries, has created an unsettled backline, preventing strong relationships from forming and inevitably leading to mistakes.

In the Premier League only Brighton & Hove Albion, Manchester United, and Nottingham Forest have had more different combinations of defensive line-ups than the 21 of Chelsea.

It’s no surprise, then, that Chelsea have made more errors leading to a shot (23) than anyone else in the Premier League, or that they are third in the charts for miscontrols (566).

Thiago Silva, 39, will be leaving this summer, but if Chelsea have better luck with injuries they won’t even need to sign a replacement.

Wesley Fofana - a brilliant young player - has missed the entire season with injury, while the talented Benoit Badiashile has also been set back by several injuries.

In goal, again it comes down to injuries.

Opta’s Expected Goals on target (xGOT) stats – which measure xG based on where the shot is placed on goal – shows Robert Sanchez, who hasn’t played since 10 December, was performing better than his replacement Djordje Petrovic.

Sanchez’s xGOT score of 24.78 is almost the same as Petrovic’s 26.56, and yet the latter has conceded nine more goals.

Pochettino will have the full-backs he needs next year

But if that isn’t enough to convince you the Pochettino project will take off next season, then consider how vital the full-backs were to his Spurs team.

Full-backs provide all the attacking width for Pochettino, playing an essential role in stretching compact defences from flank to flank in order to make room in the penalty area. Long diagonal switches to Danny Rose and Kyle Walker were a key feature of his Spurs team.

Reece James and Ben Chilwell have been out virtually all season, and although Malo Gusto has played well on the right, there has been no counter-balance on the left, making it easy for opponents to avoid being pulled out from the middle.

Chelsea are joint-second from bottom for crosses attempted (515) and accurate crosses into the penalty area (48), while they are only ninth in the division for total switches of play (95).

This helps explain arguably Chelsea’s No 1 problem in the 2023/24 season - running out of ideas when faced with a low block.

Sorting Chelsea’s Premier League matches by their possession share, their top 16 games (64-78 per cent), outlined in the table below, have produced only 22 points (W4 D6 L6), while their bottom 19 (30-63 per cent) have produced 36 points (W11 D3 L5). That’s 1.4 points per match in the top 16 and 2.0 points per game in the bottom 19.

How Chelsea fare by possession 

This problem can be solved with a well-balanced pair of attacking full-backs – which Pochettino may have if Ian Maatsen returns from his loan at Borussia Dortmund.

Maatsen, superb in the Champions League semi-finals, could burst forward in a Pochettino team, taking on the opposition right-back to help yank those deep blocks out of position.

One more summer and Pochettino era could explode

Put all that together, and you have a team who: understand the manager’s tactics and look fluent between the boxes; on xG have been performing like a Champions League side already; will solve their goalscoring issues via Jackson’s improvements and Nkunku’s return; have good defenders set to come back from injury; and a new full-back partnership ready and waiting.

Plenty to be optimistic about, then, and that’s before you consider what another summer of coaching could do and a transfer window to finesse the squad.

Chelsea can still finish in the top six this year, completing a successful first year in the job for Pochettino. If that happens, people will say their rise has come out of nowhere. It hasn’t.

Wherever Chelsea finish this year supporters can look forward to a considerably better 2024/25.