Home   >   Statistics   >   Putting Chelsea’s poor start to the season in perspective

Putting Chelsea’s poor start to the season in perspective

By on October 19, 2015

Football media has something of an obsession with hyperbole and upper limits. From Jamie Redknapp’s “top, top, top, top” players to giving 110% effort, or metaphorically busting of a gut, the media often place a painful emphasis on what’s immediately in front of them.

Thus, of late the world of football has once again whipped out the book of clichés to describe Chelsea’s form this season. Words such as “abhorrent,” “awful,” and “dreadful” don the back pages next to pictures of a glum looking Jose Mourinho or John Terry. Then the statisticians took over, pointing out that it has been more than thirty years since the club lost three of their first five games and how [example]. The only thing left to ponder, it would seem, is how much longer Mourinho’s hair has to be for Chelsea to get back to winning ways.

Football Every Day prides itself in flawlessly avoiding these traps. A cliché only becomes a cliché when there has been truth at its core; and indeed, Chelsea have struggled so far this season. But at just a quarter of the way through the season, let’s try to put their woes in perspective.

Historically, their struggles are nothing abnormal in the context of reigning Premier League champions — only look as far back a Manchester United’s plummet in the 2013/2014 campaign — though the severity is clearly surprising given the strength of their team. United had obvious flaws to their title-winning but aging 2012/2013 squad, whereas Chelsea’s dominance last year appeared more likely to extend into the 2015-16 season.

However, with a 2-0 win over Aston Villa at the weekend they appear to be on their way back up the table. The prevailing question for Jose Mourinho is how much ground they can make back up and how much is enough for him to keep his job.

Looking at the records of the Premier League title winners over the course of the last five seasons, Chelsea’s current eleven-point tally is well off the pace, but arguably not too far afield to recover. In 2010/2011, eventual title winners Manchester United had seventeen points at this stage in the season and City’s title winning team in 2013/2014 had earned sixteen at the nine-game mark.

The track record of Manchester United (red) over the course of the 2010/2011 season.

The track record of Manchester United (red) over the course of the 2010/2011 season compared to their Premier League competitors.

A similar chart, documenting the title winning season of Manchester City (blue) and the two-horse title race in the 2011/2012 season.

The table tends to “sort itself out” sometime between game-week nine and game-week twenty. For the past five seasons, the eventual title winner had earned between forty-five and fifty points by the twentieth game no matter their standing after nine games. At this point, the top two or three teams in the table tend to go unchallenged for the rest of the season. Chelsea, however, are already set to miss that benchmark this season as even a perfect record would only bring them to forty-three points by their twentieth game.

The Blues’ eleven-points stands the club ten below City, and it would take a near-perfect record to get the club fully back on track by Christmas. Every team, even the best of them, have their ups and downs; it’s just that Chelsea have already dropped enough points to last them well into 2016.

By the end of the campaign, the bar has been consistently at eighty points to win the title, though by the looks of this year’s current top four, Chelsea might just be able to get by with a few more dropped points here and there. At least they will have to hope – they can only afford to drop seven points for the entire rest of the season to reach a grand total of eighty points.

Mourinho remains optimistic. “We can win all four, we can lose all four. Everything is open. We are in October. Everything is open,” the Portuguese manager said per ESPNFC on Monday. Yet it is clear that little room for error remains and upcoming fixtures against Liverpool and Tottenham Hotspur are looking to be must-wins.

“Confidence is fundamental. We need to keep the tactical awareness, the tactical discipline. The spirit. The effort,” said Mourinho.

“The concentration, because concentration is fundamental. And step by step bring with good results the confidence levels up.

“And confidence levels are coming with results.”

Photo credit: Stiendy, via Wikipedia Commons
Raw data courtesy of jalapic's Github resources

About Alex Morgan

Alex Morgan, founder of Football Every Day, lives and breaths football from the West Coast of the United States in California. Aside from founding Football Every Day in January of 2013, Alex has also launched his own journalism career and hopes to help others do the same with FBED. He covers the San Jose Earthquakes as a beat reporter for QuakesTalk.com and his work has also been featured in the BBC's Match of the Day Magazine.