Top of the league in tackles – why midfielder’s great stats actually show a Chelsea weakness | OneFootball

Sky Sports’ Mark McAdam did a nice feature on Moises Caicedo today after the midfielder put in another good performance at the weekend. He was the man of the match as we took on Manchester United, and it wasn’t just because he scored the crucial equalising goal.

Once again he was just the dominant force on the pitch in an otherwise pretty tepid showing. He covered a lot of ground and injected much needed energy to his team. He’s having a great season, and this was just the latest example.

WhoScored have him as our second highest rated player after Cole Palmer, and the only reason he hasn’t picked up more MOTM awards is that Palmer is hoovering them all up.

You can see their discussion in the clip embedded here, with this analysis coming right at the start:

Moises Caicedo celebrates a Chelsea win. (Photo by Mike Hewitt/Getty Images)

Caicedo stats show his strength – but also Chelsea’s weakness

As they point out, Caicedo is number one in tackles in the league this season. That’s partly because he’s a good player, but also partly a result of the very open midfield Chelsea have. If we were suffocating teams with possession that number would be lower, and it would be no knock on Caicedo.

This just shows how often he’s bailing us out in transition, as does the fact that he’s 6th in the league in interceptions.

In Enzo Maresca’s dream world, these numbers would actually probably come down, with Caicedo instead hopefully becoming more of a tempo-controlling midfielder in a side which dominates possession, rather than an emergency firefighter. Currently Caicedo plays an average of 53 passes a game with a 88% accuracy.

Players like Ryan Gravenberch and Mateo Kovacic, playing similar roles for the teams at the top, average closer to 70 a game with accuracy closer to 90%.