It’s a refrain you hear a lot at the moment about Chelsea. Despite their good start to the season, there’s still something missing when comparing the Blues to the top teams in the league, and the Chelsea teams of the past which won titles.
A ruthless goalscoring number 9 is often mentioned, despite Nicolas Jackson’s improvements over the last year. A top goalkeeper is another thing that often comes up, despite Robert Sanchez’s great showing at the weekend.
But one thing that’s been talked about for a long time is the need for a really dominant centre back. Levi Colwill, Wesley Fofana and even Tosin Adarabioyo all have their qualities, but none display the sort of hyper-alpha, John Terry style domination of their own box that takes a good defence and makes it great.
Some of this is intangible – just the “aura” and the leadership that top defenders have. But you can also measure it to some extent in terms of their “duel success.”
Best duel win rates (aerial & ground) among centre-backs in the Premier League this season (50+ contested):
◎ 72.2% – Marc Guéhi
◎ 68.0% – Virgil van Dijk
◎ 65.6% – Jacob Greaves
◎ 65.5% – William Saliba
◎ 64.3% – James Tarkowski pic.twitter.com/BX34zEyVoT— WhoScored.com (@WhoScored) October 9, 2024
Chelsea still lack final defensive piece
We’ve had some really pretty easy fixtures compared to most of the top teams, yet we’ve got nobody in the top 5, as you can see above. Players like Virgil Van Dijk and William Saliba are exactly who you think of when you talk about these sorts of defenders, and they’re on the list despite having played harder games.
Of course you can still be a great defender and not make this list, and you can have a great defence and not have a player on this list. James Tarkovski is on the list and Everton have conceded the joint second most goals in the league.
But we still think it should be a stat that the club look into very closely next time they look to buy someone for the back line.
