For anyone watching yesterday’s Chelsea match, we once again came out of the halftime chat with lackluster energy and effort, and leaked goals like an old kiddie pool that’s been left in the garage too long. This isn’t new, and has been happening all season long in the league. No one seems to know why it’s happening, and no one from the press conferences seems to be asking the question, although at this point, they should be.
It’s beyond mere blips, we are in outright data points and trends now. I gathered up some data from one of my favorite sites, understat.com, showing goals and shots in time splits. They thankfully track data in each of six fifteen minute splits for the match, and the one I care about today is the 46-60 minute split. As could be expected, we are atrocious during this time frame. Shockingly so, in fact. How bad are we? Well, here’s a couple of quick tables I threw together just now to illustrate:
On the left is our Goal Delta. Which is at -5, only one off the worst in the entire Premier League so far. Right there with some of the worst teams in the table right now. Notice how (besides Everton and ourselves) the entire top half of the table is either even or positive in terms of 46-60 minute split goal delta. I’m pretty sure that’s not a coincidence.
On the other hand, now, look at the table on the right. That’s our Shot Delta. Meaning during that 46-60 minute window, we out shot our opponents by 38 shots. Or more than 1 more shot per match more (we’ve played 34 so far). This is incredible, in that we are being out scored, yet vastly out-shooting the other team.
In terms of actual details… we’ve been out scored 7 to 12, and out-shot our opponents 93-55 in this split. For those doing the math, that’s right, 55 shots to score 12 goals. Or 4.58 shots per goal. Not shots on target, mind you, but simply total shots. Just think about that. I did. I started looking up players.
Besides the obvious ridiculousness of Edinson Cavani (2.71 really?? WOW) look where our opponents rank in terms of players that score a lot of goals this year:
This is just absurd. We should NOT be conceding this many goals nor from this few shots. Our opponents are at Messi-level against us. I’m sure you are saying right now that this is as bad as it can get, right? It’s not going to get worse, is it? Well, fair to say, no, beyond being really bad during this split, this is about as extreme as it gets. In terms of shot quality, we aren’t the worst for this split. Laughably, that goes to Manchester City. But it’s hilarious. City have conceded a mere 3 goals during the 46-60 mark, but their xGA is at 4.75, and they’ve only conceded 27 shots all season in this time split, giving their xGA/SHA a whopping 0.176. We are merely at 0.139. But I think it’s okay that they are giving up such good looks, considering they are outscoring their opponents 20-3 during that time split. But we can still laugh at City looking bad at something.
As for why this bad performance by Chelsea keeps happening, it’s one of the mysteries of the universe right now. Are the players taking naps? Drinking too much tea? Being drugged? All stuck waiting for the potty because poor AC is taking too long? Not eating enough orange slices or drinking enough juice boxes?
Until the press starts asking serious questions like this, we’ll sadly never know.
