So given Sarri’s press comments about our struggles scoring, I thought I’d take a quick and-admittedly-simplistic glance at how his Napoli side did versus Chelsea prior to his arrival, to see how we are doing.
I took the three Napoli seasons he was there, the same three Chelsea seasons, plus the current one for my dataset. I used the following metrics:
- xG per Game
- xGA per Game
- xGDelta
- G per Game
The goal was to see if there were any trends with respect to goals scored primarily with not only his Napoli side, but also with the core of this Chelsea roster, and then the combination of Sarri(smo) and Chelsea this season. Obviously this is just a simple chart, but it’s still quite interesting to see.
Notice how the last three seasons, both Napoli’s expected goals and their actual goals per game are quite high. And notice how the expected goals for Chelsea are quite low each of the last three seasons prior, and beyond an absolutely abnormal league winning run in 16/17, low in the actual scoring bucket, too.
If anything, while the actual goals aren’t there yet, at least Mauricio Sarri has lifted up our expected goals (and expectations), if not our actual goals scored. He’s likely frustrated because he’s used to a squad both expected to be scoring more goals AND actually doing so. And the Chelsea supporters are sitting here watching an obviously more attacking side, with an expected goals scored of almost a quarter of a goal more per match, yet only scoring less than 0.2 goals more, not to mention being sold on Sarrismo, which did so much more the last three years in Serie A.
What is obvious is we need to continue this roster overhaul we’ve started with the summer window and now this January window, and clear out the surplus and bring in fresh new talent more ideally suited to how we wish to play. It cannot happen soon enough.
