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.

It was not all that raised eyebrows in Mourinho’s monologue, as he attempted to explain Chelsea’s problems this season.

“Look, statistics are statistics but, if you analyse the numbers, you can get some good information,” the Portuguese began. Match after match, we beat Chelsea records of high intensity work. In the last three matches, we beat the records three times.

“We ran and worked more than ever, and at a certain intensity we’d never done before. Our levels of ball possession are much higher than ever before, too. Our chances are higher than ever. Our number of goals is lower than ever. So, football people like you are intelligent. You have the numbers, you read the numbers, you draw some conclusions.”

Those numbers may be different to what Mourinho claims, but he still offered some conclusions of his own.

“It’s obvious that it’s not a question of developing the game, going through the phases of the build-up and arriving at the last moment, putting the ball in the net. We are arriving at so many situations where we just need a tap-in, and we’re not doing that.”

That is not obvious from Opta’s numbers. According to their figures, Chelsea have created just 13 “clear-cut” chances this season - the lowest in the Premier League. As a guide, Arsenal have created the most with 51. Just above Chelsea, then, are Bournemouth, West Brom and Newcastle United. They have all created 15.

Of Chelsea’s 13, meanwhile, they have only missed eight. As such, it is extremely fanciful to suggest that so many of their problems have just been down to not finishing. Chelsea have barely put themselves into positions where they can finish. One of the biggest concerns this season has been the lack of cohesion in attack, and how infrequently they put together integrated attacking moves. It points to a problem in the attacking coaching.

Mourinho is some way correct in terms if “high intensity work”, though. According to Opta, Chelsea are seventh in the Premier League in high-intensity sprints, with a total distance run in that regard of 28.99km. Bournemouth are top with 38.51km, and Manchester United bottom with 22.21km.

Whether it is enough to finish in the top two of this Champions League group remains to be seen. They could do with creating some proper chances.