Who are Chelsea FC? (Part 1)
And what should we make of them for Fantrax?
Todd Boehly and the Clearlake Consortium took over Chelsea Football Club on May 30th 2022, ending almost 20 years of Roman Abramovich’s stewardship. Over the course of the following off-season the new ownership went about a refresh of the ‘back-office’, with changes made from board level down. Thomas Tuchel was a crown jewel in the club’s staff and it seems that the plan was originally to back him with investment and support to rebuild the squad. Reportedly this relationship didn’t take long to sour.
It was taking time to replace the Director of Football and the recruitment team and it seemed that Tuchel was not interested in role-playing either position in the interim. The end-result was a bit of a mess. High-cost bets on late-career replacements to some of the key squad exits (Rudiger, Christensen, Werner) and a seemingly bizarre decision to not look at the central midfield position saw fairly average results to start the season and, alongside the relationship deterioration between board and the manager, saw Chelsea swing the axe and remove Tuchel.
Chelsea have continued to throw money around this January. The new recruitment team is in place and all signs point to a commitment to help Graham Potter reshape the club in a new (younger) image. I will go on record here to say that I believe in the majority of cases when it comes to transfers, the only fair time to judge them is looking back once the player leaves the club. So this won’t be a dissection of whether moves were good value (or whether Chelsea could’ve done better things with their resources). Instead, this short series is about what this activity likely means for Chelsea for this season and beyond, what it might be telling us about how they plan to play, and what should we expect for Fantrax?
The goalkeeper
There isn’t a huge amount to say here, but I imagine Chelsea will be delighted that, given Edouard Mendy has been struggling for form and fitness, somehow Kepa Arrizabalaga has found good form (arguably for the first time in his Chelsea career).
He’s fairly comfortably outperforming his post-shot expected goals number (PSxG) and, according to FBref numbers, his performances have saved Chelsea from conceding 6.8 more goals. Given their form, this is a pretty big deal. Let in those 7 extra goals and they could be even lower than 10th. Chelsea’s goals against this season is sitting at 21 at the time of writing, good enough for 4th best in the league. Let in another 7 goals, however, and they’d be languishing in the middle of the pack on 28 (joint with Everton). So it is absolutely fair to look at Kepa as one of the bright spots in a challenging Chelsea season.
That’s not to say that things have been perfect for Kepa. He still has shown some fragility commanding his box and some culpability rests on him for goals conceded to Man City and Fulham. But overall, this season has been far better for him both in real football terms and for Fantrax.
The biggest point of caution with Kepa is that despite the actual numbers conceded, Chelsea are giving him a lot to do at the moment. It’s keeping him active with save volume. In the previous two seasons Chelsea were only giving up an average of 0.78 expected goals against per 90. This season it’s up at 1.20 and that is coming because Chelsea are giving up around 1-1.5 extra shots on target per 90. Keeping Kepa active seems to be doing good things for him but it’s almost definitely not the aim for Chelsea, who will be hoping that their defence improves with improving defender health and investment into the midfield.
This isn’t to say that Kepa won’t be a good option through the remainder of the season, but don’t be surprised if his points profile shifts towards being more dependent on clean sheets if Graham Potter is able to get his defenders healthy. Looking beyond this season it is still hard to see Chelsea not wanting to upgrade in this position if the opportunity is there.
The centre backs
Chelsea have seen a lot of outgoings at CB over the last few years, having seen Fikayo Tomori, Marc Guehi, Antonio Rudiger and Andreas Christensen all departing permanently over the last two years. That would have left the cupboard bare, with just a 38 year old Thiago Silva and Trevoh Chalobah to hold the fort. So in the Summer Kalidou Koulibaly and Wesley Fofana joined. To some degree, these probably felt like ‘no-brainer’ signings for the club. Koulibaly was the experienced head that could partner Silva. Fofana was the exciting young CB who could lead a backline for multiple contracts. Variable form for Koulibaly and a knee injury for Fofana have limited their time on the pitch and Chelsea reacted by bringing in Benoit Badiashile in the January window.
But what can we infer from the type of player that Chelsea are looking to sign for this position and from who is playing under Graham Potter to date?
Firstly, I suspect that Chelsea will continue to vary between two and three centre-back formations, depending on the opponent. Although his formations are often fluid, FBref list Potter as having made use of a three centre-back formation 12 times since taking charge and a back four 9 times (I suspect partly driven by player availability). With a healthy set of players, he does have choices in this area. I would be willing to make my bet that the preferred three will end up being Thiago Silva, Wesley Fofana and Benoit Badiashile.
The big thing you’re getting from this combination of players is comfort on the ball and specifically good ball progression. It’s something you also get slightly less of from Koulibaly (62nd percentile for progressive passing) and Chalobah (43rd). In case you’re wondering if this could be a coincidence, it’s also something we can see when we look at Chelsea’s other rumoured CB target from the last two windows in Joško Gvardiol, who is even better at this aspect of his game with a 93rd percentile score for number of progressive passes played. There’s presumably going to be some interesting discussion in the summer about how to handle this group, especially given they have Levi Colwill due back from his loan at Brighton. If you’re wondering what stands out statistically in Levi’s FBref profile, it’s a familiar picture…
In terms of your roster decisions: if you’re not specifically chasing clean sheets, Badiashile looks like the one to target for Fantrax as he’s got an active profile and looks a set piece threat at the other end. In his second start (against Liverpool) he was a constant threat in the opposition box and on another day could’ve added a goal and an assist to go with the 15.5 points he’d already earned. Thiago Silva does have value as long as Chelsea are improving. I’d mostly be tempted to leave Koulibaly, Chalobah and Fofana on the waiver wire for now. But if they show signs of becoming more solid defensively again, any of them are streaming options.
The full-backs / wing-backs
I’ve spent quite a lot of time on Twitter talking about how Chelsea in their current guise are dependent on the effectiveness of their wing-backs. In particular, they’re incredibly reliant on Reece James, though some of this is likely James’s unique skillset and some of it is likely that when he is injured Chelsea’s options are either a post-peak Azpilicueta or playing an out of position player like Loftus-Cheek or Chalobah there, which inevitably means sacrificing a lot in either attack or defence.
No surprise then that Malo Gusto was a priority in January. It isn’t overly fair to compare most players to Reece James on FBRef, especially so for a 19 year old with a relatively small number of games in his career, but a glimpse at their profiles and you can start to see why Chelsea are investing in him. The goal-threat isn’t there at this point, but you see what looks like a Reece-James lite profile when it comes to shot-creation, progressive passing and dribbling. By comparison, Azpilicueta is still a plus defender but doesn’t really threaten going forwards. In essence at the moment, at right wing/full-back Chelsea either have a progression / attacking machine in Reece James, or they’ve got a huge drop off to a replacement.
I wouldn’t even contemplate not starting a healthy James in Fantrax, but wouldn’t start any of the current back-ups. Gusto will be interesting next season and could directly impact Reece James minutes, as the club look to manage the load on their star man. There will probably be a very interesting (likely WAR based) impact vs availability discussion to be had about Reece this summer.
On the other side of the field Chelsea really miss Ben Chilwell as a complimentary piece to James. In particular what Chilwell is great at that seems hard to replicate when he is missing is the threat he brings from receiving the ball in the box. Unfortunately for Chelsea, Marc Cucurella is not the same player when it comes to getting forward. Lewis Hall has been one of the bigger bright spots for Chelsea this season and in his time playing at LB / LWB has shown glimpses of the same threatening forward movement (particularly in receiving the ball in shooting positions in the opposition box) but he doesn’t have Chilwell’s level of end-product at this point in his career and unfortunately has a M position designation in Fantrax. Similar to the other side of the field, I don’t think I want to start anyone other than Chilwell here. If Hall was to make a full time transition to D in Fantrax next season, or if Chelsea return to Tuchel-levels of defensive solidity then Cucurella is an OK option as a defensive full-back but, for now, I wouldn’t want to be relying on the backup options at LB in a tight gameweek either.
So having looked at the back line, we see a picture of a team that’s not just looking to get younger, but seemingly one that’s looking to improve their ability to play out from the back with the profiles of CB and FB. If they stay healthy, I think this means we can continue to expect big things from Chilwell and James as attacking players and should keep a close eye on Badiashile too from a Fantrax points perspective.
In the next installment we’ll look at the midfield (and why progression from these positions might be being prioritised so much!).
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