Chelsea may have won the possession battle but created very, very little against an ostensibly defensively shaky Arsenal side, and what we did create was generally of poor or low quality, especially in terms of expected goals.
Michael Caley’s model has Chelsea on 0.8 xG while Understat has us only on 0.75, a poor return in either case from 13 attempted shots — and hilariously just 1 of those 13 was actually on target.
xG map for Arsenal - Chelsea. After a dominant first half, the Gunners sat back and defended and Chelsea created 0.3 expected goals with 70% possession it was hilarious. pic.twitter.com/61BePN2x51
— Caley Graphics (@Caley_graphics) January 19, 2019
Of the dozen that missed the target, the one that was actually our best chance and generated about half of our total xG was David Luiz and Pedro almost repeating their long ball connection from the previous weekend.
Unfortunately, Pedro’s chip was wide of the mark this time, though the play itself was excellent, the pass tremendous, the timing of the run absolutely impeccable.
If that goes in, the story of the game changes. But the fact that David Luiz’s 40-yard lobs are the team’s best (and just about only) offense at the moment is not a good state of things.