Chelsea are 5th worst Premier League team in crucial stat – they won’t get 4th unless it changes | OneFootball

The October international break comes about 20% of the way through the season, so it’s a good moment to take a look at the teams in the Premier League and how they’re all getting on.

A pretty solid measure of a team is their xG difference. That is to say, the quality of the chances they’ve created minus the quality of chances they’ve conceded. It rewards both good attacking or good defending, and punishes the inverse.

Chelsea’s expected goals difference and what it means

Chelsea’s expected goals compared to other Premier League teams.

Chelsea’s xGD is 1.2. That’s +0.17 per game. Last year we hovered far higher, closer to +0.6.

That puts them just 9th in the league, two spots behind their actual position.

So if things were to continue as they are, we would expect to actually drop down the table as things revert to the mean. That’s not good at all. Of course it’s still to early to say much, given the uneven fixtures, the red cards and the injuries we’ve had. Nobody will be panicking yet.

But there’s no doubt that we need to improve number that a lot, both by tightening up at the back and by creating more chances in attack.

A look at our rivals shows for far off we are – Arsenal are miles ahead on +1.08, Man City on +0.71.

Chelsea conceding too many shots

Our xG in favour is pretty solid, it’s the chances we’re conceding that are the problem. There are only 5 teams worse off than us in that category – West Ham, Man U, Nottingham Forest and Burnley.

The return of a swathe of defenders after this international break should help us climb that table. We just need to tighten up defensively, take the pressure off Robert Sanchez, and keep scoring our chances. If all goes to plan, by the turn of the year we should be back right up among the top teams.