“Chelsea’s Million-Dollar Transfers Fail to Tackle Major Woes: What’s Next?”
“Chelsea’s Million-Dollar Transfers Fail to Tackle Major Woes: What’s Next?”
Chelsea have had so many problems both on and off the field that it’s hard to keep track of them all at once.
Goalkeeper has been relegated to a lower concern simply because there’s still a desperate need for a striker, a centre back and various other positions too. But despite having bought 3 goalies in 2 summers for a cost north of £40m, we’re not too confident with the options available to us.
Most fans have come to the same conclusion – Petrovic is a decent keeper, but he’s not going to take us to the next level. The majority of the enthusiasm around him came from the fact he was replacing Robert Sanchez, whom fans had already started taking a dislike to following a series of errors with the ball.
Petrovic is safety first with the ball, which is fine by us, and he’s made some great stops. But our recent run of dreadful defensive form was certainly in part down to him, and the stats show it.
Bad stats undermining defensive efforts
Chelsea’s post-shot expected goals, which measures how many the team have conceded compared to how many you’d expect them to concede given where the shots were taken from, has them as 5th bottom in the league. According to FBRef, they have conceded 0.22 more goals per game than you’d expect given the shots they faced.
A negative value in this category is a disaster – Wolves are top with +0.17, so they’re starting every game with essentially half a goal advantage over us. We all know how fundamental a goalkeeper is to a team, and this team isn’t winning anything without a great glovesman.
Either Petrovic needs to improve, or you can add goalkeeper to the list of positions to target this summer. Given these sporting directors have already attempted to address this position, that’s another black mark against their name.
