Chelsea Transfers

[Special Juan 28,122]

6 minutes ago, Pizy said:

I’m not really sweating the Andrey Santos stuff. Annoying as hell that he hasn’t been used more during the CWC but I don’t think we’re actually even considering letting him go. 

I’d only get concerned if he himself comes out and starts agitating for a move away. Or if some club like Bayern start openly tapping him up and turning his head.

 

It's happening now with big clubs that's why your hearing and reading about the Santos briefs and they aren't being shot down. Big clubs aren't daft, they will have watched him last season, seen he was superb and knowing that he is going back to Chelsea where they lack trust in their young talent, and you can bet your bottom dollar if Santos was at another club we would be chasing him for 50M

[MoroccanBlue 5,378]

Santos leaving our bench just to sit on PSG/Bayern’s bench? 
 

He was awful against Tunis so the plan to integrate him slowly is looking like the effective approach. 

[Stats 7,142]

1 hour ago, Special Juan said:

Maresca is a complete and utter coward and this is why I cannot stand the bloke, he played the likes of Achempong in shite games and lauded praise on him saying how good he was then when it comes to the PL you don't see them for dust yet we continue with a shit under performing Gusto. Maresca is scared to take risks, and risks with these young lads have to be taken, and I mean the last twenty mins of a game where we are leading 2-0, they learn from training and learn more from playing.

We have just played LAFC and ES Tunis and Santos and Ach have had a small sniff, by playing Santos he won't kill your chances of winning or losing the CWC, we need and Marseca needs to to stop cowering, grow some back bone and play the likes of Santos or he's gone. Only a few days ago we shot the Ach rumors down with immediate effect but every week we have heard Santos briefs and nothing is being shot down.

 

Weird thing is earlier in the season, he stunned everyone when he picked an 18 year old Acheampong in CB against a physical Palace team away from home, which no one expected and he said he was our best player in that game. He was awarded with a start in our next PL game because of that and because he made a little mistake which caused Bournemouth to score, he subbed him off and never started him in a league game again. So he did show he can play youngsters in high pressured environments, however ever since, he just seemed to be very careful with picking players who have had not had much first team experience. 

[Special Juan 28,122]

4 minutes ago, Stats said:

Weird thing is earlier in the season, he stunned everyone when he picked an 18 year old Acheampong in CB against a physical Palace team away from home, which no one expected and he said he was our best player in that game. He was awarded with a start in our next PL game because of that and because he made a little mistake which caused Bournemouth to score, he subbed him off and never started him in a league game again. So he did show he can play youngsters in high pressured environments, however ever since, he just seemed to be very careful with picking players who have had not had much first team experience. 

He did the same with Sanchez who made many many mistakes, then brought in Jorgensen, he made one mistake and then he was dropped straight away. He's talked more about Josh than he has played him

[Duppy Conqueror 1,528]

Acheampong is one of our most composed players already,players develop at different speeds but he's been ready for an extended role for a while.for me the biggest decisìon Marseca has is where should he be a primary starter. But i'd certainly put him in our "untouchable" group of players.

[Vesper 30,106]

Hear me out: Noni Madueke is about to explode

A goalscoring boom is on the horizon for England's divisive winger, even if everyone's quite sniffy about him

https://scoutedftbl.com/noni-madueke-is-about-to-explode/

 

With injuries and his team-mates’ quality often relegating him to the bench, Noni Madueke didn’t play a whole lot during his developmental years at PSV. By the time Chelsea picked him up in January 2023, he’d played just 2,187 minutes of senior league football. Still, it was unsurprising to see him land in the Premier League so early, given the hype he’d generated in his limited Eredivisie appearances.

Two full seasons into his Chelsea career, the general discourse is decidedly less optimistic on Madueke. Earlier this month, The Guardian reported Chelsea were “open to offers” for the winger, apparently due to concerns over his development ‘stalling’. Similarly, last week, Matt Law reported that Madueke hasn’t been put up for sale but is “not considered to be untouchable”, prompting interest from a variety of clubs, including Arsenal, Newcastle United, and Tottenham. Arsenal are supposedly in pole position - a quick Twitter search will tell you their fans are not overly thrilled.

This popular perception is, I’d argue, misguided. Not only is Madueke and his role in propelling Chelsea’s attack currently underrated, he is primed to make a huge leap in his goalscoring. When that explosion happens, people will ask who saw it coming.

You will, after we go on our deep dive together. Let me explain.

Chelsea’s (suboptimal) attack and its reliance on Madueke

After a free-scoring, direct attacking approach in Enzo Maresca’s early days, Chelsea turned into a different kind of team as the season progressed. As Jon Mackenzie described, in the second half of the season, Chelsea’s attack slowed down in more ways than one. To help shore up their transition defence, Maresca reduced the pace of his attack, and shifted towards using intricate build-up play more often to get to the final third.

Of course, as Chelsea discovered, the way you get to the final third influences what you can generate from the final third. Attacking an unsettled defence swiftly yields very different outcomes compared to facing a settled, compact low block. As Jon illustrated, in the second half of the season Chelsea started to spend much more of their time with the ball, attempting to break down settled defences. The upshot of this was that their attacking production fell sharply; they created 17% less xG in the second half of the season.

From The Athletic FC’s video from last month. ‘Creation’ refers to turning attacking third possession into chances.

Creating space against a settled defence is never easy, but it’s worth exploring how Chelsea attempt to pry open a low block. The first and most important principle of their final-third attacking is width. Maresca places five players across the full breadth of the pitch in an attempt to stretch the defence; the wingers, usually Pedro Neto and Madueke, stay close to the touchline, while left-back Marc Cucurella joins the frontline by either overlapping or underlapping. Meanwhile, Nicolas Jackson floats in and around central areas, while Cole Palmer drifts around the right half-space, between the centre and the flanks.

There’s another attacker on the other flank, I promise.

The second key principle is overloading one side to isolate a player on the other flank. Chelsea tend to attack down the right, moving the ball from the centre when progressing to create a numerical advantage on that side. From this point, they ideally target runs from the left, whether by a late arrival from Cucurella or a forward like Pedro Neto or Jackson attacking the channels. However, ineffectual movement has meant they isolate on the left much less than they overload on the right. Chelsea take 20% of their shots from the right side, the highest proportion in the league.

The third principle is using dribbling from wide areas for ball progression, unsettling defences, and creating shots. Instead of circulating the ball around the low block a lot, the ball reaches Chelsea’s wingers close to the touchline and they’re tasked with moving it into the box, often attracting defenders and creating space elsewhere, after which they attempt to lay it off to a team-mate or cut inside and shoot. Last season, Chelsea created the 3rd-most shots from take-ons (1.53 per game).

 

But a major issue with this approach is that creating shots and entries into space out of thin air is a difficult task for most wingers. Being reliant on pushing the ball out wide and letting the wingers ‘cook’ leads to a system that places too large a burden on wingers, and often leads to unsatisfactory shots due to the difficulty of generating them from crowded wide areas. An indicator of the latter in the data is that Chelsea have only the 7th-highest xG per shot in the league (0.11) and take shots from the 9th-highest distance away from the goal on average (16.7 yards). This is far from ideal for an elite side, and doesn’t represent a consistent, dependable way to break down settled low blocks.

Do the math: what does it mean for Chelsea’s first-choice right-winger when their side attacks with width, runs attacks through the right flank, and uses dribbling from wingers to attack settled defences? You guessed it: Chelsea end up being highly reliant on Madueke to run their attack.

After Chelsea move the ball into the opposition third, the ball reaches Madueke’s feet close to the touchline. Due to Chelsea’s right-back – whether that’s Reece James or Malo Gusto – inverting into midfield or underlapping in the channels rather than making overlapping runs out wide, Madueke starts from positions especially far away from goalscoring areas.

Via StatsPerform/The Analyst

Even so, he carries the ball into dangerous areas at an outstanding rate. Among Premier League forwards, Madueke’s in the 95th percentile for progressive carries (6.82 p90) and is in the 98th percentile for carries into the box (4.12 p90). In short, almost no one in the Premier League penetrates enemy territory through dribbling like Madueke, and as a result, Chelsea are heavily dependent on him to move the ball into dangerous areas.

His dribbling offers Chelsea more than just penetration. As Kees van Hemmen wrote for SCOUTED in 2023, Madueke’s standout skill is his ability to break down low blocks, helping “break open a stale match on the dribble”. Madueke’s dribbling threat pulls in opponents to defend him, creating space for his team-mates and speeding up Chelsea’s attacks. As a result, his dribbling gravity is crucial to Chelsea’s attack.

 

And when defenders consciously choose not to double-team Madueke, as poor Cameron Burgess desperately tried to warn Leif Davis, this happens.

Madueke tends to be a high-risk, high-reward dribbler, aggressively attacking space behind congestion. This yields a tremendous upside, but also means he loses the ball fairly often; he completes only 44% of his dribbles (in the 57th percentile). Nevertheless, Madueke’s dribbling oils the gears of a Chelsea attack in need of repair in ways conventional scoring stats don’t quite measure.

That being said, his progress last season indicates his conventional scoring stats are going to change significantly very, very soon.

---

The impending explosion

As we discussed earlier, creating shots from wide positions off the dribble is difficult, and often leads to mediocre shooting opportunities from wide, deep positions. For most of Madueke’s career, this was accentuated by bad shooting habits.

When he received the ball out wide, he passed up longer dribbles and passes to cut inside and take speculative shots, much to the frustration of his team-mates. In the 2023-24 season, he took 2.65 shots p90 with an xG/shot of just 0.02, the combined-lowest ratio among Premier League forwards that season. Take a look at all his shots from the wide-right area of the box.

Now, for comparison, take a look at his shot map from last season. The shots from the wide areas of the box are all still there, but they’re accompanied by many more attempts from the central areas of the box (or what Paul Riley calls the ‘danger zone’), as well as a general explosion in shot volume. Compared to his 2.65 shots p90 in 23-24, Madueke took 3.54 p90 in 2024-25, with his xG/shot reaching a much healthier 0.12.

 

His plain xG figures truly illustrate his shooting improvement. From a paltry non-penalty xG (NPxG) figure of 0.15 p90 in 2023-24 – in the 19th percentile for Premier League wingers and attacking midfielders – his NPxG p90 number has shot up to 0.43 last season, in the 94th percentile for Premier League forwards. In layperson terms, Madueke’s gone from being a player who rarely gets into scoring positions to a player who generates good shots more than most wingers. This jump is unparalleled in recent history. One previously similar case was Vinicius Junior rising from 0.3 NPxG90 (and 3 goals) in 2020-21 to 0.41 NPxG90 (and 17 goals) in 2021-22, but even there the jump in xG is lower.

Yes, to acknowledge the elephant in the room, Madueke only scored seven goals in 2024-25. One easy explanation is he simply didn’t play enough, due to a hamstring injury in the second half of the season, and rotation. He scored 0.31 non-penalty goals p90, which landed him in the 77th percentile and is already higher than much-coveted players like Florian Wirtz, Khvicha Kvaratskhelia, and Rafa Leão. Madueke played just 59% of Chelsea’s total minutes with only five appearances from the bench, which might otherwise skew his per 90 figures. An increase in playing time will inevitably bring more goals.

Also, Madueke has been on the wrong end of shooting variance. He underperformed his xG by 27% in 2024-25, scoring seven goals from 9.6 xG. Intuitively, this may seem like a result of bad finishing, considering xG models are based on ‘average’ conversion rates from different circumstances. However, overperforming and underperforming xG rates over long periods is a very, very rare phenomenon, with most players reverting to ‘mean’ conversion rates. Moreover, Madueke’s shooting variance has swung back and forth over the years, with his career goalscoring and xG numbers being near-identical - the flaw in his scoring bag evidently isn’t his finishing.

So, what’s behind Madueke’s improvement in chance-getting this season? One: he carves out entries into dangerous areas at an even higher rate through his dribbling. Few players get as many of their touches close to goal as a result of their dribbling into advanced territory. Plus, as per The Analyst, Madueke takes the most shot-ending carries in the league with 1.62 p90. All this could make him a self-reliant goalscorer with more time on the pitch.

His off-ball movement has also improved. Whether it’s in tight areas or with space ahead, Madueke offers constant motion, and with his pace and ability to modulate speed and direction, he’s a consistent target for passes in behind.

 

Young wingers who can create shots for themselves out of nothing, single-handedly help a team penetrate enemy territory, and constantly make incisive runs without the ball, don’t grow on trees.

---

Madueke’s residual flaws

All that being said, Madueke’s game still possesses a few shortcomings. One that sticks out in footage is his unsatisfactory body coordination and balance. A lanky winger standing at 6’1”, it often looks like Madueke’s legs won’t listen to his body, resulting in wasted opportunities and making turnovers from potential goals.

Another is his passing in the final third. While Madueke uses his movement and dribbling to get into the box and put in threatening cutbacks (as you can see in his chance creation map)…

Via StatsPerform/The Analyst

…he doesn’t always see the best passing option in a number of situations, whether it’s an opportunity to directly create a shot or a simple pass to an underlapping midfielder or full-back. His tendency to do everything himself, to continue his dribble or shoot over making short passes, carries an opportunity cost.

Nonetheless, all this yields him progression and creation numbers slightly above average. He played 1.55 passes into the box p90 (63rd percentile) and assisted 0.19 xG (51st percentile) last season - numbers an elite side could live with, considering his dribbling and scoring skill, and how his decision-making is likely to improve with experience.

What’s more concerning is his proclivity for hot and cold streaks. While his expected goal contribution doesn’t vary too much in the larger scale of things, with a coefficient of variation of 65%, his output is dependent on his form. After a subpar start to the season, he consistently put Chelsea in positions to score towards the middle of it, before cooling down again in his final starts.

To reach the stratosphere, Madueke still needs to find consistency. But right now, as Liam Twomey remarked in The Athletic FC’s aforementioned video, Madueke offers consistent ‘aggression’ in constantly dribbling his way into dangerous areas and taking shots, even if his output can vary across the season. For sides who struggle with low blocks like Chelsea, this is fundamentally valuable.

---

Conclusion

Noni Madueke is a high-volume player. He dribbles a lot, shoots a lot, and carries many of Chelsea’s attacks, which lead to both eye-catching success and anticlimactic failures. When Madueke’s finishing luck has gone against him, the failures stand out, with his poor co-ordination accentuating the optics. But his value in progressing the ball and creating space are less easy to spot, both to fans and in conventional stats. None of this makes for great PR.

But a deeper look brings Madueke’s current production as well as his sky-high potential to light. Similar to our discussion of Nico Williams from a couple of weeks ago, Madueke raises Chelsea’s floor by frequently creating something out of nothing against low blocks, and their ceiling by being an option for players like Cole Palmer and Enzo Fernandez to find with a pass. The fact so much of his value comes from his independent dribbling means his skillset is portable and scalable across team quality levels and playing styles. Consequently, he’s a player Chelsea should continue to rely on - or another Champions League-level side should sign for a price much lower than his ability and potential deserve.

Next season, with enough minutes, Madueke is likely to score 10-15 goals. People will wonder where the sudden explosion came from, and we’ll know it’s been in the works for a long time.

[Vesper 30,106]

[YorkshireBlue 3,265]

6 minutes ago, Vesper said:

Hear me out: Noni Madueke is about to explode

A goalscoring boom is on the horizon for England's divisive winger, even if everyone's quite sniffy about him

https://scoutedftbl.com/noni-madueke-is-about-to-explode/

 

With injuries and his team-mates’ quality often relegating him to the bench, Noni Madueke didn’t play a whole lot during his developmental years at PSV. By the time Chelsea picked him up in January 2023, he’d played just 2,187 minutes of senior league football. Still, it was unsurprising to see him land in the Premier League so early, given the hype he’d generated in his limited Eredivisie appearances.

Two full seasons into his Chelsea career, the general discourse is decidedly less optimistic on Madueke. Earlier this month, The Guardian reported Chelsea were “open to offers” for the winger, apparently due to concerns over his development ‘stalling’. Similarly, last week, Matt Law reported that Madueke hasn’t been put up for sale but is “not considered to be untouchable”, prompting interest from a variety of clubs, including Arsenal, Newcastle United, and Tottenham. Arsenal are supposedly in pole position - a quick Twitter search will tell you their fans are not overly thrilled.

This popular perception is, I’d argue, misguided. Not only is Madueke and his role in propelling Chelsea’s attack currently underrated, he is primed to make a huge leap in his goalscoring. When that explosion happens, people will ask who saw it coming.

You will, after we go on our deep dive together. Let me explain.

Chelsea’s (suboptimal) attack and its reliance on Madueke

After a free-scoring, direct attacking approach in Enzo Maresca’s early days, Chelsea turned into a different kind of team as the season progressed. As Jon Mackenzie described, in the second half of the season, Chelsea’s attack slowed down in more ways than one. To help shore up their transition defence, Maresca reduced the pace of his attack, and shifted towards using intricate build-up play more often to get to the final third.

Of course, as Chelsea discovered, the way you get to the final third influences what you can generate from the final third. Attacking an unsettled defence swiftly yields very different outcomes compared to facing a settled, compact low block. As Jon illustrated, in the second half of the season Chelsea started to spend much more of their time with the ball, attempting to break down settled defences. The upshot of this was that their attacking production fell sharply; they created 17% less xG in the second half of the season.

From The Athletic FC’s video from last month. ‘Creation’ refers to turning attacking third possession into chances.

Creating space against a settled defence is never easy, but it’s worth exploring how Chelsea attempt to pry open a low block. The first and most important principle of their final-third attacking is width. Maresca places five players across the full breadth of the pitch in an attempt to stretch the defence; the wingers, usually Pedro Neto and Madueke, stay close to the touchline, while left-back Marc Cucurella joins the frontline by either overlapping or underlapping. Meanwhile, Nicolas Jackson floats in and around central areas, while Cole Palmer drifts around the right half-space, between the centre and the flanks.

There’s another attacker on the other flank, I promise.

The second key principle is overloading one side to isolate a player on the other flank. Chelsea tend to attack down the right, moving the ball from the centre when progressing to create a numerical advantage on that side. From this point, they ideally target runs from the left, whether by a late arrival from Cucurella or a forward like Pedro Neto or Jackson attacking the channels. However, ineffectual movement has meant they isolate on the left much less than they overload on the right. Chelsea take 20% of their shots from the right side, the highest proportion in the league.

The third principle is using dribbling from wide areas for ball progression, unsettling defences, and creating shots. Instead of circulating the ball around the low block a lot, the ball reaches Chelsea’s wingers close to the touchline and they’re tasked with moving it into the box, often attracting defenders and creating space elsewhere, after which they attempt to lay it off to a team-mate or cut inside and shoot. Last season, Chelsea created the 3rd-most shots from take-ons (1.53 per game).

 

But a major issue with this approach is that creating shots and entries into space out of thin air is a difficult task for most wingers. Being reliant on pushing the ball out wide and letting the wingers ‘cook’ leads to a system that places too large a burden on wingers, and often leads to unsatisfactory shots due to the difficulty of generating them from crowded wide areas. An indicator of the latter in the data is that Chelsea have only the 7th-highest xG per shot in the league (0.11) and take shots from the 9th-highest distance away from the goal on average (16.7 yards). This is far from ideal for an elite side, and doesn’t represent a consistent, dependable way to break down settled low blocks.

Do the math: what does it mean for Chelsea’s first-choice right-winger when their side attacks with width, runs attacks through the right flank, and uses dribbling from wingers to attack settled defences? You guessed it: Chelsea end up being highly reliant on Madueke to run their attack.

After Chelsea move the ball into the opposition third, the ball reaches Madueke’s feet close to the touchline. Due to Chelsea’s right-back – whether that’s Reece James or Malo Gusto – inverting into midfield or underlapping in the channels rather than making overlapping runs out wide, Madueke starts from positions especially far away from goalscoring areas.

Via StatsPerform/The Analyst

Even so, he carries the ball into dangerous areas at an outstanding rate. Among Premier League forwards, Madueke’s in the 95th percentile for progressive carries (6.82 p90) and is in the 98th percentile for carries into the box (4.12 p90). In short, almost no one in the Premier League penetrates enemy territory through dribbling like Madueke, and as a result, Chelsea are heavily dependent on him to move the ball into dangerous areas.

His dribbling offers Chelsea more than just penetration. As Kees van Hemmen wrote for SCOUTED in 2023, Madueke’s standout skill is his ability to break down low blocks, helping “break open a stale match on the dribble”. Madueke’s dribbling threat pulls in opponents to defend him, creating space for his team-mates and speeding up Chelsea’s attacks. As a result, his dribbling gravity is crucial to Chelsea’s attack.

 

And when defenders consciously choose not to double-team Madueke, as poor Cameron Burgess desperately tried to warn Leif Davis, this happens.

Madueke tends to be a high-risk, high-reward dribbler, aggressively attacking space behind congestion. This yields a tremendous upside, but also means he loses the ball fairly often; he completes only 44% of his dribbles (in the 57th percentile). Nevertheless, Madueke’s dribbling oils the gears of a Chelsea attack in need of repair in ways conventional scoring stats don’t quite measure.

That being said, his progress last season indicates his conventional scoring stats are going to change significantly very, very soon.

---

The impending explosion

As we discussed earlier, creating shots from wide positions off the dribble is difficult, and often leads to mediocre shooting opportunities from wide, deep positions. For most of Madueke’s career, this was accentuated by bad shooting habits.

When he received the ball out wide, he passed up longer dribbles and passes to cut inside and take speculative shots, much to the frustration of his team-mates. In the 2023-24 season, he took 2.65 shots p90 with an xG/shot of just 0.02, the combined-lowest ratio among Premier League forwards that season. Take a look at all his shots from the wide-right area of the box.

Now, for comparison, take a look at his shot map from last season. The shots from the wide areas of the box are all still there, but they’re accompanied by many more attempts from the central areas of the box (or what Paul Riley calls the ‘danger zone’), as well as a general explosion in shot volume. Compared to his 2.65 shots p90 in 23-24, Madueke took 3.54 p90 in 2024-25, with his xG/shot reaching a much healthier 0.12.

 

His plain xG figures truly illustrate his shooting improvement. From a paltry non-penalty xG (NPxG) figure of 0.15 p90 in 2023-24 – in the 19th percentile for Premier League wingers and attacking midfielders – his NPxG p90 number has shot up to 0.43 last season, in the 94th percentile for Premier League forwards. In layperson terms, Madueke’s gone from being a player who rarely gets into scoring positions to a player who generates good shots more than most wingers. This jump is unparalleled in recent history. One previously similar case was Vinicius Junior rising from 0.3 NPxG90 (and 3 goals) in 2020-21 to 0.41 NPxG90 (and 17 goals) in 2021-22, but even there the jump in xG is lower.

Yes, to acknowledge the elephant in the room, Madueke only scored seven goals in 2024-25. One easy explanation is he simply didn’t play enough, due to a hamstring injury in the second half of the season, and rotation. He scored 0.31 non-penalty goals p90, which landed him in the 77th percentile and is already higher than much-coveted players like Florian Wirtz, Khvicha Kvaratskhelia, and Rafa Leão. Madueke played just 59% of Chelsea’s total minutes with only five appearances from the bench, which might otherwise skew his per 90 figures. An increase in playing time will inevitably bring more goals.

Also, Madueke has been on the wrong end of shooting variance. He underperformed his xG by 27% in 2024-25, scoring seven goals from 9.6 xG. Intuitively, this may seem like a result of bad finishing, considering xG models are based on ‘average’ conversion rates from different circumstances. However, overperforming and underperforming xG rates over long periods is a very, very rare phenomenon, with most players reverting to ‘mean’ conversion rates. Moreover, Madueke’s shooting variance has swung back and forth over the years, with his career goalscoring and xG numbers being near-identical - the flaw in his scoring bag evidently isn’t his finishing.

So, what’s behind Madueke’s improvement in chance-getting this season? One: he carves out entries into dangerous areas at an even higher rate through his dribbling. Few players get as many of their touches close to goal as a result of their dribbling into advanced territory. Plus, as per The Analyst, Madueke takes the most shot-ending carries in the league with 1.62 p90. All this could make him a self-reliant goalscorer with more time on the pitch.

His off-ball movement has also improved. Whether it’s in tight areas or with space ahead, Madueke offers constant motion, and with his pace and ability to modulate speed and direction, he’s a consistent target for passes in behind.

 

Young wingers who can create shots for themselves out of nothing, single-handedly help a team penetrate enemy territory, and constantly make incisive runs without the ball, don’t grow on trees.

---

Madueke’s residual flaws

All that being said, Madueke’s game still possesses a few shortcomings. One that sticks out in footage is his unsatisfactory body coordination and balance. A lanky winger standing at 6’1”, it often looks like Madueke’s legs won’t listen to his body, resulting in wasted opportunities and making turnovers from potential goals.

Another is his passing in the final third. While Madueke uses his movement and dribbling to get into the box and put in threatening cutbacks (as you can see in his chance creation map)…

Via StatsPerform/The Analyst

…he doesn’t always see the best passing option in a number of situations, whether it’s an opportunity to directly create a shot or a simple pass to an underlapping midfielder or full-back. His tendency to do everything himself, to continue his dribble or shoot over making short passes, carries an opportunity cost.

Nonetheless, all this yields him progression and creation numbers slightly above average. He played 1.55 passes into the box p90 (63rd percentile) and assisted 0.19 xG (51st percentile) last season - numbers an elite side could live with, considering his dribbling and scoring skill, and how his decision-making is likely to improve with experience.

What’s more concerning is his proclivity for hot and cold streaks. While his expected goal contribution doesn’t vary too much in the larger scale of things, with a coefficient of variation of 65%, his output is dependent on his form. After a subpar start to the season, he consistently put Chelsea in positions to score towards the middle of it, before cooling down again in his final starts.

To reach the stratosphere, Madueke still needs to find consistency. But right now, as Liam Twomey remarked in The Athletic FC’s aforementioned video, Madueke offers consistent ‘aggression’ in constantly dribbling his way into dangerous areas and taking shots, even if his output can vary across the season. For sides who struggle with low blocks like Chelsea, this is fundamentally valuable.

---

Conclusion

Noni Madueke is a high-volume player. He dribbles a lot, shoots a lot, and carries many of Chelsea’s attacks, which lead to both eye-catching success and anticlimactic failures. When Madueke’s finishing luck has gone against him, the failures stand out, with his poor co-ordination accentuating the optics. But his value in progressing the ball and creating space are less easy to spot, both to fans and in conventional stats. None of this makes for great PR.

But a deeper look brings Madueke’s current production as well as his sky-high potential to light. Similar to our discussion of Nico Williams from a couple of weeks ago, Madueke raises Chelsea’s floor by frequently creating something out of nothing against low blocks, and their ceiling by being an option for players like Cole Palmer and Enzo Fernandez to find with a pass. The fact so much of his value comes from his independent dribbling means his skillset is portable and scalable across team quality levels and playing styles. Consequently, he’s a player Chelsea should continue to rely on - or another Champions League-level side should sign for a price much lower than his ability and potential deserve.

Next season, with enough minutes, Madueke is likely to score 10-15 goals. People will wonder where the sudden explosion came from, and we’ll know it’s been in the works for a long time.

Maybe if he didn’t go forward stop then try go forward again he might score more, hes like watching a player been fast forwarded then rewind then back to fast forward, its so fucking frustrating 

[OhForAGreavsie 6,060]

4 hours ago, Special Juan said:

I just find it fucking tragic and bizarre that after playing three games in the CWC we haven't given Santos hardly a kick of the ball yet half of Europe are chasing one of the best performing players in Europe last season.

If we let Santos go, which it looks like we will it will be nothing but tragic and could be Salah and KdB levels

I have not seen Santos play at Strasbourg and have only watched all touch videos (except that they weren't really ALL touches) of his youth tournament season before last. In those I saw absolutely nothing which suggests that allowing him to leave will even come up to CHO levels, never mind KDB. 

[YorkshireBlue 3,265]

50 minutes ago, OhForAGreavsie said:

I have not seen Santos play at Strasbourg and have only watched all touch videos (except that they weren't really ALL touches) of his youth tournament season before last. In those I saw absolutely nothing which suggests that allowing him to leave will even come up to CHO levels, never mind KDB. 

Chances are most here haven’t watched him play all season and going off twitter videos that have been posted over the season of a goal here and there.

[TheHulk 2,415]

Get rid of him to Arsenal.

[Strike 7,477]

 

 

[Reddish-Blue 2,491]

4 hours ago, TheHulk said:

Get rid of him to Arsenal.

Arsenal would try to low ball us.   I'm sort of surprised Newcastle haven't put in a bid for him, after their Elanga bid got rejected by Forest. 

[Marvin123 530]

🚨🟡🔵 Understand Al Nassr have given the green light to Jhon Durán exit, ready to accept the proposal from Fenerbahçe!

The story for Durán at Al Nassr can be over as club’s open and ready to let him go.

Fenerbahçe are now trying to agree terms with Durán.

 

 

Crazy this, but he is trouble... lived not too far from me when he was at villa and not many people were his fan.

Edited June 28 by Marvin123

[Special Juan 28,122]

Duran didn't last long over there but probably earned enough money to retire now if he wanted