Chelsea transfer news as the Blues prepare to address their biggest issue this campaign once more in the market.
For Chelsea fans, this is a well-known tale after four games of the Premier League season. The Blues are once again stuck in mid-table, but given how early it is in the season, there is still time for huge jumps week to week, and just one victory may move them up the table.
The remaining impression is that even with a new manager and largely new players, they still have the same problems to deal with. Only Everton and Chelsea have underperformed their xG by a greater percentage after one month. Although it will probably even out in the long term, Graham Potter’s lack of attack efficiency and bad goalkeeping cost him the season before.
Only three clubs – Brentford, Manchester City, and Brighton – have registered more xG at this point in the season, and Chelsea’s tally is more than Arsenal or Tottenham, both of whom are ahead of them in the actual table. Winning the xG battle is hardly enough to convince those who go to watch matches that everything under the surface is actually okay, but what it does is show that most of the play is up to a good enough standard.
Only City and Arsenal have a superior performance at this point when xGA (expected goals against) is taken into account. But scoring goals is what counts, and despite all the good vibes surrounding Nicolas Jackson, he only has one to show for it. He will try to remedy that on Sunday by traveling to Bournemouth.
Jackson, like the rest of the team, is incredibly inexperienced and only has one particularly strong period of play to support even a more conservative £30 million price tag from last summer. Even less is available to his backup, Armando Broja, who is injured but is making a sluggish recovery.
Like his comrades, he is once again left with a lot of promise rather than proof. Without much proof, Chelsea is hoping for the best and still believes that they need a new striker after spending $1 billion with Todd Boehly-Clearlake Capital.
