It’s been five weeks into the new season and the Premier League has already started taking shape.
Since the league’s inception, some teams have had strong starts and delivered outstanding performances.
The same cannot be said for Mauricio Pochettino’s Chelsea, who had an outstanding pre-season before the start of the 2023/24 campaign.
It’s still early days, so it’s difficult to say where the club will finish in the standings after spending over £1billion on new signings since Todd Boehly took over the club.
Though the team is young and in a rebuilding process, most Chelsea supporters find the current situation to be discouraging.
In the first five matches this term, the Blues have accumulated a total of five points out of 15. The London-based side lie 14th on the league table, winning just once, losing twice, and drawing twice.
Here are two key factors that have been affecting Chelsea on the field of play:
FAILURE TO BREAK THE LOW-BLOCK
Chelsea have had trouble scoring against opponents that play a low-block style, sit back, and are attacked on the counter for the past two seasons.
When playing against a side that defends in a low-block, Chelsea are more predictable since they are forced to move plays to the flanks for crosses rather than play through the middle.
Opponents, who play a low-block system feel comfortable so they just sit back and hit Chelsea in counter-attacking situations.
Chelsea will be able to produce more centrally and more surprising plays if they have a midfielder who can connect plays from the middle to the attack. I believe if Nkunku returns from injury, things can change for Chelsea.
I’ve also come to realise that Nicolas Jackson sometimes has to carry the ball up front by dropping very deep since Chelsea lack that kind of midfielder.
FAILURE TO CAPITALIZE ON BIG CHANCES CREATED
Although Jackson has had a good performance in terms of his work rate since the season started, his inability to convert chances created into the net has become a contributing factor to Chelsea’s issues of not finding the ball at the back of the net.
Looking at the teams that have created most big chances, Chelsea are ranked 3rd (74 big chances created) with Manchester City (108) and Liverpool (88) placing 1st and 2nd respectively.
The Senegal forward has taken a total of 18 shots in the five games he has played, scoring only one goal, missing six big chances created and recording a shooting accuracy of 33%.
Should Chelsea improve in these two areas, they will be providing good performances in the league.
