23 box touches in 5 games – this Chelsea player desperately needs service to help the team | OneFootball

We’ve really enjoyed Joao Pedro’s time at Chelsea so far.

He made the perfect start, being really effective from the moment he arrived at the Club World Cup.

He’s nasty, physical, but technical too, with nice link up play and finishing. He’s been used as a 9 or a 10 and already has two goals.

Joao Pedro needs to get the ball more in dangerous areas to make an impact

Joao Pedro in the Champions League. (Photo by Alex Grimm/Getty Images)

But drilling down a little deeper, while it’s excellent to have a player able to compete and score corners, as he did for both his goals so far, the team are going to need more than just set piece contributions for him.

He’s often quite isolated when playing as a 9, and while Liam Delap is out injured and Marc Guiu isn’t trusted, that’s exactly where he’s going to be for the foreseeable future.

It’s time for JP to get his first open play goal going, and a look at his box touches in the league show that it’s going to take a while at this rate.

Attacking service must be improved

Of course top strikers only need a few touches to make an impact – one touch is all it takes to score. But it’s generally symptomatic of an attack that isn’t supplying the Brazilian with enough ammunition to score the goals we need to put games away.

Enzo Maresca needs to figure out how a team without Cole Palmer can get the ball to the former Brighton man in dangerous positions. Estevao Willian and Alejandro Garnacho are being lined up to play more, and can hopefully do a better job than Jamie Gittens and Pedro Neto have been doing.