Chelsea's Season So Far (Opta Stats)

by Barrie on Jan 14, 2012 12:57 PM GMT

Chelsea's Season So Far (Opta Stats) With 20 Premier League games played so far in the 2011/12 season, Chelsea sit in fourth position on 37 points; 11 behind leaders Manchester City.

In Andre Villas-Boas' debut season in England, the 3 home defeats in 10 home games are of concern. Arsenal, Liverpool and most-recently, Aston Villa have all come away from the Bridge with maximum points. Wolves are the only side to have failed to score on their travels to Chelsea in the league this season.

It's not all doom and gloom for the Blues however, with a number of bright sparks this season.

22-year old Daniel Sturridge leads the club goalscoring chart with 9 goals; scoring against goalkeepers including Tim Howard, Pepe Reina and Brad Friedel.

Here is how Sturridge compares to the experienced Didier Drogba and £50 million signing Fernando Torres:

via www.barriesview.com

Daniel Sturridge, who has started more games and played more minutes than both Drogba and Torres has matched this with a higher chance conversion (21%) and shooting accuracy (48%). Notably, Sturridge has shown improvement on his right foot in recent weeks; the foot he seemingly refused to use until 6 weeks ago.

Playing on the right wing, Sturridge, the 6'2" forward has been involved in a lack of aerial battles (3) this season, and won none of them. An improvement of his crossing accuracy (14%) is something Sturridge should look work on over the coming years if he is to continue playing out wide.

Ramires has continued off where he finished last season as one of the best players in the Chelsea midfield. The Brazilian adds energy to the Chelsea team, and has 4 goals to his name already.

Spanish summer signing Juan Mata has also netted 4 times in his first season at the club, and leads the team with 7 assists. The ex-Valencia midfielder has shown off his playmaking ability.

In his eleventh season with Chelsea, Frank Lampard has hit the net 8 times already this season and assisted another 4 despite spending time on the bench. Lampard played 90 minutes just once in the Blues' final seven Premier League games of 2011, but his stats are still very impressive:

via www.barriesview.com

Frank Lampard has a better tackle success rate than he did last season in the centre of midfield, as well as a 5% pass completion improvement from open play. The England international has had fewer shots this season, but both his accuracy (65%) and chance conversion (35%) are significantly up from last year.

A hat trick versus Bolton in October may be the highlight of Frank Lampard's season, but his other significant contributions this season include the winners at Blackburn, Manchester City and at Wolves earlier this month.

The Chelsea defence has certainly fallen apart from the days of Jose Mourinho. The Blues have kept just 4 clean sheets during the first 20 games of the season, conceding 25 in that time. 7 teams, including newly-promoted Swansea City, and Sunderland whom have used 2 goalkeepers whilst they wait for Craig Gordon to return.

via www.barriesview.com

Petr Cech kept 15 clean sheets last season. He needs 11 from Chelsea's final 18 games this season to match that. His goals conceded per game average has shot up from 0.87 in 2010/11 to 1.28 since the arrival of Villas-Boas.

The Portuguese manager's high defensive line has come under some scrutiny this season. As as David Luiz's defensive ability in general. The ex-Benfica centre back has been limited to just 8 starts this season; through injury and selection.

John Terry too has come under the spotlight this season, but the England captain continues to stack up tackle-after-tackle and interception-after-interception game-after-game as ever. The Chelsea skipper has already notched up 4 league goals this season; as many as he scored in the Premier League-winning 2005/06 season and more than any other season in his career.

Chelsea are in talks with Gary Cahill over a potential January move for the Bolton captain. Whether the club see him as a long-term replacement for Terry or an immediate partner, I guess we'll find out if the transfer goes through.

The Bolton centre back, noted for his poor marking in the penalty area ranks well statistically; making more interceptions (43) than John Terry himself to this point. Cahill has been involved in a significantly higher number of aerial duels than both Terry and Luiz combined this season, and the Trotters' main defender has prevented less players from dribbling past him than the England captain in 2011/12.

Here's how all three compare:

via www.barriesview.com

Data provided by EPL Index.
Written by Barrie from PremiershipTips.com

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Comments

fascinating stastics

made me realize a lot of things i didn’t know previously. one thing does stick out though. gary cahill appears to have been quite significant defensively and holds his own in terms of statistics against luiz and terry despite having played for a defensively frail bolton team. i think that it also has to be agreed upon that cech is having somewhat of a terrible season thus far (by his standards), though obviously it would have been difficult for him to repeat his chelsea player of the year performance this season in any case.

by CFC1905 on Jan 14, 2012 1:50 PM GMT reply actions

Those statistics don't imply that Cahill's holding his own against DL and Terry in anything but headers

by Graham MacAree on Jan 14, 2012 7:31 PM GMT up reply actions

It shows more than that.

Luiz loses the ball on average once every 80mins. Cahill once every 234mins. This is important if we are playing possession football.

by Smac84 on Jan 16, 2012 6:29 PM GMT up reply actions

That tells you nothing about where (or even how) they lost possession

by DPeezy on Jan 16, 2012 6:35 PM GMT up reply actions

It's completely irrelevant to possession football, considering that misplaces passes happen significantly more often than a defender getting tackled

by Graham MacAree on Jan 16, 2012 6:43 PM GMT up reply actions

So is he trying passes that he shouldn't be too often?

Sorry but I cant see how a high loss of possession is completely irrelevant.

by Smac84 on Jan 16, 2012 7:06 PM GMT up reply actions

No

I’m saying it’s miscounting losses of possession to the point where the Opta number is useless. Cahill loses the ball via pass twice per every David Luiz giveaway.

by Graham MacAree on Jan 16, 2012 8:11 PM GMT up reply actions

And Opta is only telling you the number of times a give player is caught in possession

by Graham MacAree on Jan 16, 2012 8:12 PM GMT up reply actions

So the opta loss of possession stat

Above is really a caught in possession stat? If these stats are useless what is the point in recording them. With or without them he does seem to give the ball away more than he should be. Or is it just that when he does give it away it gets noticed more than others because of trying something fancy with it.

by Smac84 on Jan 16, 2012 8:36 PM GMT up reply actions

The point of recording them is so that people pay for them

And yet, David Luiz gives the ball away more than he should. It’s also less than Gary Cahill does, because David Luiz is a much better passer.

by Graham MacAree on Jan 16, 2012 9:06 PM GMT up reply actions

I'm not anti Luiz by any means just saw a stat that looked high

But apparently these stats are useless.

by Smac84 on Jan 16, 2012 9:24 PM GMT up reply actions

Opta presents the statistics in a way that's incredibly confusing

They’re unfortunately not the sort of thing where you can just read the numbers and not do any further processing

by Graham MacAree on Jan 16, 2012 9:33 PM GMT up reply actions

Part of it is that the poster reworded the stat to make it less clear

Opta calls this stat “dispossessed” – which implies an active participation of opposing player(s).

A distinction is also made between “dispossessed” and an unsuccessful “take-on”/dribble attempt.

And of course, the vast majority of possession-ending plays is simply an inaccurate pass. If you just look at this last stat, we have:
Sideshow – 364 accurate, 56 inaccurate
Cahill – 437 accurate, 150 inaccurate
Or, simplified, DL makes roughly 6 accurate passes for every 1 inaccurate, while Cahill makes 3 accurate passes for every 1 inaccurate.

Now, obviously the team’s style of play will contribute to this stat…but just on the face of it, Cahill is a much, much, much worse passer than Sideshow.

by DPeezy on Jan 16, 2012 9:37 PM GMT up reply actions