Jose Mourinho has 'Rafa Benitez moment' offering stats to explain Chelsea poor form

You could almost call it Jose Mourinho’s “Rafa Benitez moment”, and not only because of the danger of dropping into the Europa League, a competition he so pointedly criticised as beneath Chelsea after his Spanish predecessor won it.

There was also the conspicuous appeal to “stats”, if not “facts”, to try and explain away under-performance. The problem was that some of Mourinho’s stats were wrong, and the reality starts to show what is wrong with Chelsea.

Mourinho claimed that their goalscoring chances are “higher than ever” and they were just missing finishes, but Opta stats show that his side actually create the fewest number of clear-cut chances in the Premier League.