Chelsea’s top rated player in Man U defeat racked up 8 clearances and and 6/8 long balls | OneFootball

It’s pretty hard to look back at a game like Saturday’s defeat to Manchester United and draw any serious conclusions.

Game stats and game state thrown off by early red

The context of the game was just so unusual – Robert Sanchez was sent off after just 5 minutes, putting Chelsea into a nightmare situation immediately. The Blues had 10 men and were forced to use a sub right away to bring in Fillip Jorgensen.

Not only that, manager Enzo Maresca decided to bring off another attacker to switch to a back 5. Then, shortly afterwards, Cole Palmer came off after aggravating his groin. So 3 of the original starting 11 were off the pitch by 20 minutes in.

Chalobah the top of the numbers for Blues

Trevoh Chalobah celebrates. (Photo by Alex Livesey/Getty Images)

A glance at the stats shows a few interesting things, at least. Trevoh Chalobah was by far the highest rated player on Chelsea’s team with a 7.7, which is of course in part down to his excellent goal, a guided header from a superb Reece James cross.

But he did more than that, to be fair. He won 4 aerial duels, more than anyone else in the game. His 8 clearances were also the most in the game, and he piled 2 tackles on top of that. 6 of his 8 long balls were accurate, a really impressive number, and he finished up with a pass completion of 96.2%.

He failed to step out in time to prevent the Bruno Fernandes goal, but it was a matter of centimetres – and to be fair, like the rest of us, he was probably expecting his goalkeeper to come and claim the ball rather than letting it drop uncontested to Patrick Dorgu to head on.

The defender continues his impressive form to start the season. It’s no wonder Maresca likes him more and more.