Chelsea’s 8-pass miss looked like the new Madueke

Chelsea start a massive week with a win at Turf Moor, so is the momentum starting to build?

On Saturday lunchtime, the Blues proved simply too strong for Burnley, winning 2-0, Pedro Neto heading home Jamie Gittens’ cross as half-time approached, before Enzo Fernández scored the second goal at the end.

​​​​​The match was significantly more comfortable than the scoreline suggests, with the Clarets creating just one big chance and accumulating a miserable 0.44 xG, rarely threatening Robert Sánchez’s goal.

That represents three successive Premier League wins for Enzo Maresca’s side, who have now won five of their last six league games, ahead of a massive week, with Barcelona and then Arsenal visiting Stamford Bridge over the next eight days.

Despite the victory in Lancashire, a few Chelsea players were the subject of criticism, one in particular being compared to a player leaving for pastures new over the summer.

Why Chelsea sold Noni Madueke

In one of the surprises of last summer, although it is now a well-trodden path at this point, Noni Madueke left Chelsea during the Club World Cup to sign for Arsenal for a fee of £52 million.

Last season the England international scored 11 goals in all competitions for the Blues, including seven in the Premier League, a tally bettered only by talismans Cole Palmer and Nicolas Jackson, another parachuted in.

So, it was certainly a surprise that Madueke was the one Chelsea decided to sell, but that has been the business model since the club was bought by Clearlake Capital and, having signed him from PSV Eindhoven for £28.5 million in January 2023, Todd Boehly and the other owners simply see it as a quick profit.

However, on the pitch, it could be argued that Maresca’s side missed the running and direct pace of Madueke, even though he has not featured for Arsenal since September due to a knee injury.

That said, a frequent criticism from Madueke supporters at Chelsea was that he was selfish, often going for goal when a pass 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 registered the lowest goal figure – xG figure of any player in the Blues squad, to finish with -2.6.

In the meantime, he recorded just three assists and created just six big chances, suggesting that the supporters’ – and Martin Keown’s – opinion may not have been too inaccurate.

So now which current member of Chelsea’s forward line has shown similar levels of selfishness at Turf Moor?

Chelsea’s Madueke rehearses at Turf Moor

Ever since the days of Didier Drogba, Chelsea have felt like they were in a never-ending search for a reliable centre-forward; they even signed Romelu Lukaku twice to try to solve this problem.

This summer, after ruling out Jackson, as already mentioned, they put a lot of faith in Liam Delap, which doesn’t make it ideal that he then missed six successive Premier League matches with a hamstring injury, as well as another following a red card at Molineux in the EFL Cup on the day of his return.

Currently, Delap has started the last two Premier League matches before and after the international break, but is yet to score since his goal against Espérance Sportive de Tunis in the Club World Cup, for what that’s worth, and his performance on Saturday did not receive rave reviews, with the numbers highlighting why.

As the table shows, Delap did not have much impact on the afternoon proceedings at Turf Moor.

He attempted no dribbles, made only eight passes and won only two of the eight duels he played, while, in 67 minutes of play, he touched the ball only 20 times, 28 fewer than goalkeeper Robert Sánchez, and one more than his replacement Malo Gusto.

Simon Johnson of The Athletic noted that it is evident that “Delap is still not completely up to the task after hamstring injury” while, as Taha Hashim of the Guardian noted, there were several occasions where Delap failed to play the ball to a teammate after an opening presented itself.

Given Chelsea’s range of attacking options, when Delap is the center forward one of his main responsibilities must be to facilitate attacks and link up with his teammates, as well as score goals of course, which he is not doing at the moment.

If he continues to be both ineffective and selfish, you can bet Delap won’t be with the team much longer, as Boehly will likely only buy three more players at his position in January.

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