London is Blue Dispatch #037

After 0 stoppage time winners across any games in any competition last season, Carney Chukwuemeka made it 3 in the past 35 days for Chelsea, outfoxing Leicester and helping lug the Blues to another Wembley date. With 39 games out of 52 now complete, we are at the 75% mark of the season, so here’s a quick look at how we’ve fared across every quarter before we enter the final stretch.

Note that the “average opposition league position” is a quite simple, quite shaky, metric gauging opposition difficulty based on their current league position in the English footballing pyramid. A glance at this quite rudimentary table reveals a few points of interest:

- The first 25% of our games were the easiest of the three quarters in terms of opposition difficulty, and produced our best defensive effort. Colwill at CB, Ben Chilwill at LW did add defensive solidity, with a clean-sheet almost once every two games. It is the only quarter in which the side bettered its non-penalty goals against.

- The first quarter was also our worst attacking showing yet. An attacking quartet’s first competitive games together, a raw Nico Jackson feeling his way into the league and missing big chances, an injury-ravaged attack with Nkunku, Chukwuemeka out and Pochettino playing Chilwell on the wing and Enzo at 10 contributed heavily.

- The next 13 games had easily the toughest start to any quarter (in perhaps years), with the first five opponents being Tottenham, Man City, Newcastle, Brighton and Man United. This run of five games produced two of the best results (4-4 vs City, 4-1 vs Spurs) and two of the worst (1-2 vs United, 1-4 vs Newcastle) this season.

- From one of the best defenses this season, we fell to mid-table, conceding 15 in the five aforementioned games plus the sixth (Everton.) However, we scored as many goals in the draw vs City as we’ve managed against them in the last nine games combined. The four we scored vs Spurs was the most we’ve managed in 17 ties against them, since the memorable 4-2 win at Wembley in the 17-18 season.

- The most recent quarter has seen our best run of results, despite a relatively tough fixture list featuring Liverpool and Aston Villa twice and Man City once. In those five fixtures, only Liverpool managed to best us.

- Our last 13 games have also seen our best attacking returns. The tally of 29 is slightly helped by the six against Middleborough, but we scored three or more 6 times. However, we’ve conceded 52 more shots compared to our first 13 games – managing our worst defensive performance yet, conceding two or more in six games and managing no clean-sheets in our last ten.

Zooming out a bit, we decided to take a look at how our results this season compared to the shipwreck from last season. Please pardon my data visualization abilities, it ain’t much but it’s honest work.

Not a surprise to see that we’re 11 points ahead, but here are a few other observations:

- In the corresponding fixtures against the current top 6 last season, Chelsea managed only two points from eight games. This season, we have 5 in 8, still far off required standards, but better. A 2-0 lead surrendered vs Arsenal and the opening game against Liverpool where we squandered several chances to win will sting, but provide optimism going into next season.

- Midtable teams continue to be Chelsea’s bane. In the corresponding fixtures last season vs sides sitting 6^th to 11^th, the Blues managed a dismal one win in nine games, with five of them losses. This season, the wins have quadruped to four, but there are still five losses. They are mostly against sides in the 47-52% possession range, ones that prefer drawing opponents deep with a mid or low block and exploding into transitions. An inability to exude calm and tame chaotic game states remains our biggest deficiency.

- Lower midtable has also proved to be a bit of an issue. Last season the sides between 12^th and 17^th remained largely the same (Everton, Bournemouth, Palace, Forest) and in the corresponding six games against them, the Blues lost none, won four and drew two. Against those same sides this time around, there are two losses and only two wins. Stale possession and poor transition/rest defense again proving expensive.

- In four clashes against sides in the relegation zone, we managed only two wins last season, losing two. This season, a perfect record, with a six-point swing making up more than half of our eleven point difference this difference.

In essence, our season has gotten tougher with each “quarter,” and with it our attack has grown stronger while the defense has gone from light palpitations to cardiac arrest. It is important to note that for more than half of the last 13 games, Chelsea have missed Benoit Badiashile, Levi Colwill, Ben Chilwell, Reece James, Wes Fofana and Marc Cucurella, 6 out of the 10 senior defenders in the squad, with three of them first-choice in the back four.

Scroll back to the first table and you’ll see that our last quarter could hypothetically give us a run-in against the best places sides yet, with Arsenal, Spurs, City, Villa, Brighton and United (twice, possibly) could make up seven of those 13. There are signs of optimism though – individuals in attack finding their groove, last minute winners galore and Reece James, Romeo Lavia, Carney Chukwuemeka, Levi Colwill and Benoit Badiashile all possibly available post the international break. One win in the league takes us five off United in sixth; two wins in the cup brings home silverware. Still all to play for in the final quarter.

Thumbnail Credits: CFC Pics/@Mohxmmad on X_