There's been a lot of fighting debate over the merits of Fernando Torres and Didier Drogba recently. Torres has been the subject of some bitter complaints over his inability to score goals, and despite him registering nine assists in all competitions this season he hasn't scored enough goals to get the fans on his side. The job of a centre forward, or so it is said, is to score goals.

I'm going to contest that assertion. In my opinion, the job of a football player is to help his team win, and although that might be the 10,000 foot view, it have help us to actually look at productivity if we frame our questions properly. In general, I don't think too many would disagree with me if I say that the job of a centre forward is to help his team score as many goals as possible. This, incidentally, is one of the key elements Didier Drogba brings to the team - his ability to work with Daniel Sturridge is hugely important, and Sturridge is still yet to score a league goal when Torres starts.

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I was in the Virgin Islands once. I met a girl. We ate lobster, drank piña coladas. At sunset, we made love like sea otters. *That* was a pretty good day. Why couldn't I get *that* day over, and over, and over?!

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If there is one thing that stood out to me from the match stats from that abject failure of a performance at Swansea, it was the number of crosses attempted by our Blue-clad chumps. 43 in total. Forty-three. If you're not impresses by that number, think about it this way: that's about 1 lumped ball into the penalty box for every single minute of actual Chelsea possession (54% possession, minus some fudge factor for when the play was out of play, etc, etc).

So, forty-three. And what did all that lovely English strategy get us? A nice big bouquet of a dozen roses. A lucky deflection. Nothing. And before you slag off on the Portuguese Defensive Liability (pictured), know that Juan Mata led the way with 14 of them lovely balls (just as he's led us all season).

Forty-three. A new record for the AVB regime...but more worryingly, just more symptoms of the recent Disease of Xtreme Crossing that has reared its ugly head in the camp. Three of the four highest crossing efforts of the season have come in the last 5 matches: @ Swansea (43), @ Norwich (40), v. Aston Villa (39). We haven't seen numbers like that since early season (40 v. WBA; 38 v. Leverkusen; 37 v. Norwich)...and at least back then we got the results to go our way. (FA Cup & Carling Cup matches are not included here, by the way, as no such data is available for them.)

With that in mind, let's take a look at how crosses correlate with goals scored. Are crosses (or even crossing ability by wide players) something we should be striving for? Or are they more a sign of a team bereft of ideas, launching hopeful ball after hopeful ball?

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So Chelsea drew 1-1 against Wigan Athletic after blowing a late lead thanks to some dodgy play by certain players who will remain nameless, and that's sparked off a debate about Andre Villas-Boas tactics in the match. Ignoring the introduction of Salomon Kalou at halftime, which was pretty undeniably sensible unless irrationally hating everything Kalou is your bag, the major talking point was a pair of defence-minded substitutions which saw Juan Mata and Daniel Sturridge withdrawn to protect a 1-0 lead.

The debate hasn't really managed to progress beyond the 'You smell' 'NO YOU SMELL' state as it is, and while that's partially because the Fernando-Torres-needs-to-play-more-crowd is pissed off that he didn't see the pitch it's mostly to do with the fact that as currently framed, there's no single fact strong enough to convince anyone on either side to change their position.

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Chelsea have not had their best start to the season. After a reasonably comfortable first few games, we lost 3-1 at Old Trafford and went into something of a tailspin, suffering a referee-aided defeat at Loftus Road before losing back to back Premier League matches at Stamford Bridge to Arsenal and Liverpool, precipitating 'Chelsea in crisis' cries and causing quite reasonable people to worry if the Blues were going to drop out of the top four this season.

Three wins on the bounce - including one against league leaders Manchester City - have made everyone feel a little better about the situation, but there's no doubt that we've subject to one of our worst starts to a season in a while. So, I decided to take a look at the past eight seasons and see where teams with a certain number of points (actually, points per game) on December 13th ended up. Graph coming up after the jump...

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While you ruminate over the fate of Chelsea, AVB, life, the Universe, and everything that hinges on the series of games starting tomorrow, check out what your lovable chums in Blue have been up to over the past month. By the power of statistics, I shall drain you of all emotion and make you a hollow robot-shell ready to face the challenges ahead!

Are you worried that tomorrow is not the day that Demba Ba realizes that he's not the Senegalese George Weah? Well, come marvel at the ineptitude displayed by our two main strikers! It can happen to you, too, Demba!

Are you worried that the old guard can't cut it anymore? Come and let the Castrol Rankings tell you otherwise. Florent Malouda is the 16th best player in the world!!! Crisis solved!

Are you worried that the future is bleak? Come see the promise of Romeu and Ramires and Sturridge! Some of whom may even play tomorrow, unlike Josh the Basket-dweller. You should've kept him wrapped up and protected, AVB!

Uh-oh, my emotion chip is overheating. Must. Have. Numbers.

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Well my foray into making filterable radial passing charts seemed to go down a treat, so I decided to make some more. Chelsea FC are only three games into the season, after all, and what's the point of having maps for just one game? After the jump are the passing charts for Chelsea's 0-0 draw at Stoke City and the 2-1 home win over West Bromwich Albion - go ahead and explore to your hearts' content...

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As you may or may not have noticed, We Ain't Got No History has been a little quieter than usual over the last couple of days. No, it's not because the transfer window killed me or anything (although it came close) - I've actually been playing around with a better mechanism for showing passing in specific games than either a flat chalkboard or my initial attempts at a radial passing map. Since it's taken a lot of effort to build this thing, I might as well put it to some use - let's dig into that fun Chelsea vs. Norwich City match from last weekend once more...

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In the previous post, we took a look at how our model for projecting the Premier League table performed last season, and apart from some weird quirks, I think it's probably safe to say that it seems viable enough to run with this season. Let's take a look at how the model works in general.

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