Chelsea have had a rocky start to the season, with performances ranging from pretty good to pretty bad. This is reflected in the league table as well as most statistical tables, as well as when watching games with your own eyes.

The season started on what was an immaculate run of two friendlies, where everything was working and we looked like a pretty solid team, albeit Milan having a few moments where they penetrated our press.

A pretty decent, solid performance against a strong Palace team landed only a singular point in a 0-0 draw at home on the first day of the season, though there were plenty of positives. 

The first half against Crystal Palace, however, was probably a foreshadowing of the consistent issues Chelsea have faced up until today in late October.

Simple long balls and a breach of Chelsea’s press resulted in Crystal Palace having great transitional moments against the team.

This is something that didn’t happen much in the second half after Chalobah and Acheampong really stepped up and started winning their duels and thwarting any attacks from Palace.

Chelsea then went on to win their next two games, 5-1 and 2-0 against West Ham and Fulham, though neither game was free of shaky moments. It was actually after this that these dodgy performances started to catch up with us.

Brentford scored from a long ball over the top, which Tosin failed to deal with. Bayern, like Brentford, also exploited errors and set-pieces and beat us comfortably.

It only got worse after a red card within five minutes saw Chelsea’s awful record at Old Trafford extend yet another season, conceding two goals from set-pieces.

Chelsea would scrape past Lincoln City, who created almost 2xG from set-pieces and errors alone. It only got worse after another red card, sabotaging the game against Brighton and losing a 1-0 lead embarrassingly to end up losing 3-1 at home.

It was a narrow result against Jose Mourinho’s Benfica, before dropping a top performance to beat Liverpool at home 2-1.

Recently, despite winning 3-0 away at Nottingham Forest, it was only an ‘okay’ performance, before dispatching a poor Ajax 5-1 at home in the UCL.

Despite those results, was it that that surprising that Chelsea then struggled performance wise against Sunderland on the weekend? It’s clear that a big problem here is consistency.  

Comparing the start of this season to last – What does the data suggest?

The slightly concerning thing is that Chelsea have closely matched the results against the same teams as last season, but are net negative against them. 

I’ll compare the same results from last season compared to this season, using just possession, shots, xG, and big chance stats according to my own model, to illustrate the slightly concerning trend.

Vs Crystal Palace H

Vs West Ham A

Vs Fulham H

Vs Brentford A

Vs Manchester United A

Vs Brighton H

Vs Liverpool H

Vs Nottingham Forest H

It’s extremely apparent that the data is either equal in some games, or worse in most with Fulham being the only real improvement. This is concerning.

Though there are reasons that may have contributed to this downturn in form (I’ll talk about this soon), I am relatively concerned that we just seem unable to not concede silly chances.

When looking at most of these games, a significant chunk of xGA has come from chances where we’ve made direct errors leading to a shot, or it’s come after a red card.

For example, almost all (1.92) of the 2.03 xG Brighton created against us came after the red card.

Looking at a lot of these games, Chelsea have a nice baseline of relatively little xGA conceded until either a red card or a massive mistake.

Looking even at Brentford, Chelsea would’ve conceded just 0.55 xGA until falling asleep at a long throw-in in the 95th minute.

Additionally, Chelsea only conceded 0.21xG against Nottingham Forest until going 2-0 up. It was only after then that Chelsea started conceding loads of chances. 

Fundamentally speaking, Chelsea have had an easy run of fixtures compared to some other teams, yet as of writing this, we are 9th in the table with just 14 points from 9 games.

Is the data simply skewed due to a rough patch of red cards, injuries and inexusable errors, and overtime things will look more rosy, or is this what the team truly are now?

The attack – a defence of Maresca

Our attack this season almost definitely has a higher ceiling than last, and it almost certainly has a higher floor too.

However, the attack this season are all operating with almost zero synergy together. Last season, Chelsea’s attack was good but not inherently incredible, and that was with Jackson, Noni, and Palmer, but all knew each other’s games relatively well through playing with each other for a longer time than Chelsea’s current attack (two months vs two seasons).

Considering this, it was probably unneded for the directors to change around the attack so much and replace young, inconsistent players with more young, inconsistent players. It feels like we did not really ‘move the needle’ and essentially just spent another £200m+ to end up in a year’s time to where we already were last season.

The fact that we’re doing alright without Delap and Palmer too, is the main positive for me, as putting up the numbers we are putting up without them is definitely an improvement on last year, where, without Palmer, we’d create around 0.3 xG a game without him.

While we have the fourth most effective press, we also actually press the fourth least on opposition buildup sequences. This basically means our press is good to win the ball back, but we don’t press up high on opposition build-up frequently or effectively, and this is definitely evident by just watching our games.

Our press is beaten way too easily, almost all the time, exposing us and our defence to quick, direct attacks and transitions. This doesn’t help when the main starting pair of defenders that have hurt us most are Tosin (box defender) and Chalobah (mixed bag and out of position). 

The pressing numbers are a direct consequence of Maresca trying to find implement his out of possession tactical ideas into so many new attackers at once.

The other side of the coin on Maresca

While this season has nicely highlighted not only the current flaws of the squad and some of the unneded recruitment, Maresca is also making a lot of decisions worse than last season.

His subs have been massively questionable at times (vs Brighton, vs Manchester United, vs Sunderland), while the overall squad utilisation has been poor too.

Andrey Santos needs to start over Enzo Fernandez more than he does, and Jorell Hato should start more too.

The argument that these two may not be fully ready is not as solid as it may seem, considering both are relatively experienced players, unlike Gittens and Estevao, who are being managed well.

But certain players, Joao Pedro, Neto, and Enzo Fernandez, have been massively inconsistent, and in the cases of Enzo Fernandez and Neto, they have been mostly poor.

In addition to this, Chalobah and Tosin have simply started way too many games when Josh Acheampong, who has been fine in every game he’s featured in so far, has only just become a starter.

Chelsea continue to struggle against deep blocks, and while the squad lacks gamechangers, especially without Palmer, Maresca could do more to make the attacks look less predictable and more fluid.

It is difficult to point blame at one particular person

While I give criticism to Maresca on his overall usage of the squad, and while he has had poor episodes in games tactically and in-game management-wise, ultimately, he cannot control players getting red cards and making really silly and poor decisions/mistakes.

Fatigue and other injuries means Maresca is in a difficult situation, but he is also making it worse for himself with his squad choices and in game management.

And the actual players on the pitch are being foolish, making really poor decisions, getting sent off and defending simple situations poorly whilst also making mistakes (we’re in the top three in the league for both errors leading to shots and goals). 

It’s for these reasons that I think it is a bit of a mixed bag and also difficult when you attempt to point fingers as to a sole party for our inconsistent start.

Ultimatley the players are costing most of our draws and wins, and the directors bought a whole new attack and added more time onto the process, but Maresca is also a good enough coach to negate some of these underlying issues.

While I think we are unlucky right now, if the law of averages don’t come to avail, we may have to have a deeper look at the structure of the team, as well as behind the scenes training, preperation, team talks and more.

And if your conclusion is that Maresca is not at fault for any of these and the squad simply isn’t good enough to finish in the top four, then unfortunatley it is wasted breath as the directors are not getting sacked.

Where do Chelsea finish this season?

I think we still probably end up in the top four. Bad luck, surely, and most of the time is only finite.

As players hopefully return, we can hopefully prevent reinjury as well as additional injury to other players. With this, I’d expect our form and performances to eventually pick up as long as we don’t get further injuries.

While I totally believe Maresca has been placed in a difficult position this season by above, I think he needs to stop being as control obsessed as we are and play into the fact we have injuries and look decent at set pieces.

Drop the line a bit, play a bit more on transition, and work on defending and attacking set pieces like free kicks and throw-ins.

In a season where adaptation seems to be such a big factor across the whole league, it could be Maresca’s ability or inability, or willigness to do or not adapt, that could decide Chelsea’s fate come May.