Joao Pedro's worrying Chelsea statistics despite Enzo Maresca's recent claim | OneFootball

Chelsea head coach Enzo Maresca insisted that he is content with Joao Pedro's performance despite the goalscoring drought, but statistics do not show good signs.

Joao Pedro is not a number nine that gives you 20 goals a season, Maresca claimed in Tuesday's press conference.

The Italian argued that the Chelsea striker is different from Erling Haaland, Robert Lewandowski, and Kylian Mbappe.

This is a fair argument. Joao Pedro has only reached 20 goals a season once in his career, at Brighton in 2022/23, and it was combining all his goals in three different competitions: the Premier League, the Europa League, and the FA Cup.

The Brazil international's sensational start with Chelsea, with three goals in three appearances in the Club World Cup, as well as the two goals and two assists from the opening three Premier League games, raised the expectations around him, perhaps way too high.

However, he has since made eight appearances without scoring in all competitions for Chelsea, during which he has only provided one assist.

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"You miss 100 per cent of the shots you don't take"

The lack of goals is only part of the problem, however, since in his last appearances, Joao Pedro has only made three shot attempts, and none were on target.

In terms of creating chances, he has had a total of just 0.7 expected assists (xA) in these eight games, according to FBref, with one of them resulting in an assist.

Liam Delap's hamstring injury absence in the last two months has significantly increased Joao Pedro's workload at Chelsea, and he paid for it, as Maresca revealed that the striker has not been able to train every day due to fitness issues.

This likely played a part in Joao Pedro's decline in performance, but is clearly not the only issue.

Maresca also said that Joao Pedro thrives when playing behind another striker, and he had his chances in parts of the last two games against Nottingham Forest and Sunderland, with Guiu operating in front of him.

It did not work as well as hoped, obviously, since the former Brighton man only had one shot in those two games.

It is very clear that the lack of shot attempts is a problem, and it is down to Joao Pedro to take more risks and his teammates to find him with passes.

Luckily for Chelsea, the former Fluminense star's disappointing goalscoring form has not affected the team much, since they are still topping the league in goals at the moment.

However, in the long run, if Chelsea are to compete for the title, Joao Pedro will have to be back on the scoresheet, and more often.