What will Chelsea achieve this season? A look at the data

When making a prediction, data is the most reliable metric

A lot of the build up to this season has been negative. Many fans just feel disillusioned overall, which is understandable given the last two seasons. Some just feel we’ve not made the signings to improve on last season, when we finished 6th and got to a cup final and semi final.

Yesterday’s 2-0 defeat at home to Manchester City did nothing to allay those fears for some, although I felt we put in a solid performance and deserved more. This is the best team in the world, 9 years into their time together, we’re not going to be as good as them right now, or for a while.

I’m not interested in toxic positivity or blind optimism, nor do I care for toxic negativity. So, I thought I’d look at some data and see what it could tell us about this season.

First - and it should become obvious why in a moment - let's look at the data from the PL last season.

Chelsea’s short term goal is to achieve Champions League football, which could be achieved by finishing fourth, and possibly fifth, should English teams do well in Europe this season.

So how many points are needed to finish fourth?

Well, Aston Villa, who finished fourth last season, achieved 68 points. In the 22/23 season Newcastle achieved fourth place with 71 points. Spurs achieved an identical number of points finishing fourth in 21/22. Chelsea ourselves reached fourth with 67 points in 20/21, and 66 points in 19/20.

So, there’s a good argument that around 70-73 points would guarantee you a top four finish, and Champions League football, and something around 65-70 points certainly would assure you of 5th place.

Chelsea achieved 63 points last season, so we need an increase of 7 points minimum to achieve top 4. That would mean turning one defeat into a win, and two draws into wins, maybe turn one defeat into a draw and that’s 71 points. Essentially, we could still lose 9/10 games in the PL season, still have a relatively poor defence, still have a relatively average start or run of form, and yet still potentially finish 4th in the Premier League.

So how do we make up these 8 points? Well obviously we need to score more goals and concede a few less. Can we do that?

So second, lets check our recent form:

Here’s an incredible stat for you, which I didn’t even know until I checked, and double checked.

If you take out the first 7 PL games of the 23/24 season, Chelsea would have finished 4th in the league last season. In the last 31 games of 23/24, Chelsea were the 4th best team in terms of form and points. We were the 4th best team for all but 7 games last season.

That’s quite a staggering stat, and shows you how badly our start damaged our season.

We also did this with Reece James, Christopher Nkunku, Romeo Lavia and Wesley Fofana playing a total of 883 minutes between them last season. Wesley Fofana played no minutes, Lavia only 32 minutes and Reece and Nkunku the equivalent of about 4-5 games each.

This season, of course, three of these players are fully fit, and Reece James’ absence is mitigated by the emergence of Malo Gusto. It's still entirely possible Reece will play a lot more this season than last.

For comparison, even after one game, Nkunku, Fofana and Lavia have a combined 320 mins this season. If each plays two more sets of 90 mins they’ll have near enough matched last seasons combined total. Lavia has already played more minutes this season than last.

Christopher Nkunku is likely to score more goals than whatever player he replaces in the team, his history - and his goals per game record for Chelsea even in the small number of minutes he had, suggests he will score more than any attacker bar Cole Palmer who played essentially as a 10 last year. We should score at least 10-15 more goals with Nkunku in the team more regularly. That alone, would likely see us get more points than last season. This doesn’t factor in the likely improvement in Nicolas Jackson (which we already saw over the season last year), the arrival of Pedro Neto, who looked a threat when he came on against City, and the likely - and needed - arrival of another goalscorer before deadline day.

It’s also worth saying, Aston Villa conceded 61 goals last season in finishing fourth (and Spurs in finishing 5th), only two less than Chelsea did in finishing 6th. They had a net gain of 5 goals over us in goal difference which got them over the line in fourth. So there’s an argument, if we score more goals this season, we don’t need to reduce our goals conceded much, to get over the line for top 4.

Our home form is also very good, including the City game yesterday, we’ve lost only two in our last 14 PL games at home going back to November. Those included games last season against Manchester City, Manchester Utd, Spurs and Newcastle, all of which we won or drew. The squad, or certainly the starting XI is not too dissimilar than last season, so will have that confidence of success at home going into this season.

Also given the average age of our squad, you’d expect many of them to improve and perform better and more consistently this season. This is a regular pattern for young players, and as I hint at below, we have a coach with a history of developing players.

So even with our current squad, there’s a strong possibility we will improve this season, enough to get the 7-8 points extra we require to achieve top 4.

Thirdly, there’s our signings.

Pedro Neto adds creativity, and although his goalscoring numbers aren’t great, the chances are he’ll have more goal scoring opportunities at Chelsea. He’s a higher calibre player than many of our other wingers.

Keiran Dewsbury-Hall is an attacking midfielder not afraid to take on shots, scoring 12 goals in the Championship last season, and coming into his prime under a manager he knows well. He has a ton of energy, which he showed against City. KDH could add 8-10 goals from midfield, certainly replacing the goals lost from the likely sale of Conor Gallagher.

Joao Felix is strongly linked and seems likely to sign at time of writing, and although I’m not a huge fan, last season he scored 10 goals and achieved 6 assists in 44 games.

At Chelsea, back in 22/23 season, in a poorly performing side, he scored 4 goals in 15 games. So by that ratio he’d likely add 8-10 PL goals if he started 38 PL games. This is more than either Mykhailo Mudryk or Noni Madueke scored last season, and near identical to Raheem Sterling, who seems on his way out after being left out of the squad yesterday.

The signing of CB Tosin Adarabioyo could also make a difference. Schooled in the Man City style, means he’ll adapt to Enzo Maresca’s style quickly. He’s also tall, powerful and has leadership qualities. Above all, he’s a proven, established PL player with some good experience - something the club has needed.

Finally, we all know there’s a high chance Chelsea sign a proven goalscorer before the deadline. Victor Osimhen is the strongest name linked, but we’ve also been linked with the likes of Ivan Toney. Either of those would almost certainly add goals in the attacking position, more than replacing the 2 goals scored by Armando Broja, and probably scoring more than Nicholas Jackson’s 14 PL goals. This is a non-negotiable at this point, Chelsea HAVE to sign a proven striker before the window closes.

We’ve already seen that simply scoring more goals than last season, could actually make the difference between 6th and 4th, and its clear there’s a good chance we could do just that this season.

Fourth, Enzo Maresca.

New head coach Enzo Maresca has limited managerial stats to look at and has never managed in the Premier League, so its tough to come to real “solid” conclusions from his data, but just out of curiosity, let's look at his last two jobs.

First, defence. I mentioned earlier Aston Villa made the top 4 with a defence who conceded almost an identical number of goals than us last season. My concern with our defence last season was we had no organisation or structure in our defence and played too high a line at times. We may have conceded goals in pre-season, but many have been individual mistakes whilst learning a new style of play, and against Inter we only conceded 3 shots on target in the 90 mins. There is a clear tactical structure and identity to what Maresca is trying to implement, and once players learn it - which could take a few weeks - it should help our defending.

At Leicester City last season, Enzo’s team conceded 41 goals in 46 games. 0.89 goals per game. Over 38 games, a full PL season, that’s 33.8 goals conceded, let's round up to 34 goals.

His PL 2 winning team at Manchester City conceded 30 goals in 24 games, 1.25 goals per game. Over 38 games that's 47.5 goals - let’s round up to 48 goals.

Even if you take the larger number here, 48 goals, in fact, say add 5 more for the PL that’s a reduction of 10 goals from the 23/24 season. Even that would be enough to see us make the top 4 next season, without the likely increase in goals scored.

Yesterday against Man City, we only conceded 5 shots on target, and 11 overall, one of which was a golazo from Kovacic. Last season in the corresponding game, we conceded 10 shots on target. Away to City last season, we conceded 31 shots, though only 5 on target. In the Inter friendly, we only conceded 3 shots on target and 6 shots overall in the whole game.

So even from the limited evidence we have, from this season, we’re not actually conceding too many shots on target. And we won’t be playing against Man City’s attack every week.

Second, attack. Enzo’s Leicester scored 89 goals in 46 games in the Championship last season. That’s 1.93 goals per game. Over 38 games, that would be 73 goals. Only 4 less than last season, and bear in mind that’s without the quality of Cole Palmer, Christopher Nkunku, and potentially Victor Osimhen. You’d expect this average to go up with better players.

At Man City U21, his team scored 79 goals in 24 games. That’s a staggering 3.29 goals per game, over 38 games would mean 125 PL goals. Now of course, that’s hugely unlikely, but balancing both out and taking into account the PL and quality of our attackers (likely better than last season), you’d argue based on these, granted, limited stats, we will likely score at least as many if not more goals under Maresca than we did last year.

We created 10 shots against Man City, not including the offside goal, and arguably had a clear penalty not given. There’s every chance an elite finisher, takes the Jackson chance properly or converts one of the others, and we score - that’s the difference an elite finisher makes, and why we need one.

Scoring marginally more, and conceding marginally less, would almost certainly mean a top 4 place for us in this coming season.

Finally, Enzo has experience working with young talent. He won the PL 2 with Man City U21, working with the likes of Cole Palmer and Romeo Lavia. It was their first PL 2 title for some time, and he almost certainly improved the young talent he worked with. Given the average age of our squad, having a coach used to working with young talent and proven at developing players, will be good for our considerably talented squad.

So what can we conclude from this?

From what I’ve shared today, I do believe we can have a better season this year. Even if you subtract the limited data on Enzo Maresca’s managerial career, I still believe getting 68-74 points and getting Champions League football is achievable, as is winning the Conference League, and if we’re lucky, even a domestic cup.

I think we’ll have a tough period this season (see yesterday), so be ready for that, it might even be close at the end of the season, but overall I think we’ll see a clear identity emerge, a better defence and better attack, and our players improve. Bottom line, I think the evidence suggests we can have a better, more enjoyable and more successful season than last season. We won’t challenge for the title, we’re not quite there yet, but we will improve and finish higher than last year, in my view.

As I said at the beginning, I’m not interested in toxic positivity or blind optimism, I base my opinions and predictions as much on data, and good data, as I possibly can. It's the only way to take my emotions out of it, and make more accurate predictions.

I was pretty accurate with my data-led predictions last season, I hope I can be again, because then, Chelsea will have had a very good season.

The Score