Chelsea start a massive week with a win at Turf Moor, so is momentum starting to build?
On Saturday lunchtime, the Blues proved to be simply too strong for Burnley, prevailing 2-0, with Pedro Neto heading home Jamie Gittens’ cross on the cusp of half time, before Enzo Fernández lashed home the clinching second right at the end.
The match was significantly more comfortable than the scoreline would suggest, with the Clarets creating only one big chance and accumulating a miserly 0.44 xG, rarely threatening Robert Sánchez’s goal.
This made it three successive Premier League victories for Enzo Maresca’s side, who’ve now won five of their last six in the league, ahead of a massive week, with both Barcelona and then Arsenal visiting Stamford Bridge over the next eight days.
Despite victory in Lancashire, a few Chelsea players came in for some criticism, one in particular compared to a player who departed for pastures new over the summer.
Why Chelsea sold Noni Madueke
In one of the surprise moves of last summer, albeit this is now a well-trodden path at this point, Noni Madueke departed Chelsea during the Club World Cup to sign for Arsenal for a reported fee of £52m.
Last season, the England international scored 11 goals across all competitions for the Blues, including seven in the Premier League, a tally only bettered by talisman Cole Palmer and Nicolas Jackson, another who was parachuted out.
Thus, it was certainly a surprise that Madueke was the one Chelsea decided to sell, but that has been the business model since Clearlake Capital’s takeover of the club and, having signed him from PSV Eindhoven for £28.5m in January 2023, Todd Boehly and the other owners simply view that as a quick profit.
Nevertheless, on the pitch, it could be argued that Maresca’s side have missed Madueke’s direct running and pace, even if he’s not featured for Arsenal since September due to a knee injury.
Having said all of that, a frequent criticism from Chelsea supporters of Madueke was that he was selfish, often going for goal when passing to a teammate would be the better option.
Well, to support this zeitgeist, Madueke attempted 80 shots in the Premier League last season, behind only Palmer, but had the lowest goals – xG figure of any player in the Blues’ squad, ending up with -2.6.
Meantime, he registered just three assists and created only six big chances, suggesting that perhaps the view of supporters – and Martin Keown – was not too inaccurate.
So now, which current member of the Chelsea forward line showed similar levels of selfishness at Turf Moor?
Chelsea's Madueke repeat at Turf Moor
Since the days of Didier Drogba, Chelsea feel as though they’ve found themselves in a never-ending search for a reliable centre-forward; they even twice signed Romelu Lukaku in an attempt to solve this issue.
This summer, after freezing out Jackson, as already mentioned, they put a lot of faith in Liam Delap, making it not ideal that he then missed six successive Premier League matches due to a hamstring injury, as well as another following a red card at Molineux in the EFL Cup on the day of his return.
Back now, Delap has started the last two Premier League matches either side of the international break, but is yet to score since netting against Espérance Sportive de Tunis during the Club World Cup, for what that is worth, and his display on Saturday did not earn rave reviews, with the numbers underlining why.
Shots on target
Zero
7th
Shots off target
1
4th
Expected goals
0.04
10th
Attempted dribbles
Zero
14th
Accurate passes
8
23rd
Key passes
Zero
14th
Duels won
2
21st
Offsides
1
2nd
Touches
20
21st
SofaScore rating
6.2
30th
As the table documents, Delap did not have much impact on the afternoon’s proceedings at Turf Moor.
He attempted zero dribbles, completed just eight passes and won only two of the eight duels he contested, while, in 67 minutes on the pitch, he touched the ball only 20 times, which is 28 fewer than goalkeeper Robert Sánchez, while only one more than his replacement Malo Gusto.
Simon Johnson of The Athletic noted that it is obvious that “Delap is still not fully up to speed post hamstring injury” while, as noted by Taha Hashim of the Guardian, there were multiple occasions when Delap failed to play the ball to a teammate after an opening had presented itself.
Considering Chelsea’s array of attacking options, when Delap is the centre-forward, one of his key responsibilities has to be facilitating attacks and linking up with teammates, as well as score goals of course, neither of which he is doing at the moment.
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If he continues to be both ineffective and selfish, you can bet your bottom dollar that Delap won’t be in the team much longer, because Boehly will probably just buy three other players in his position in January.
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