Chelsea v. Sheffield United - a statistical breakdown of things.

Everything from pass-maps, action-maps, and more for Chelsea's 4-1 win against Sheffield United.

Looking at Chelsea's passing-shape against Sheffield United until the first substitution showing meaningful passing relationships.

We still have a lot of ball-rotation among the ball four with Mount in the left-hand space allowing progression.

Let's a look at how Sheffield United lined up with their passing relationships.

We see a clear approach from Sheffield United to open Chelsea's flanks with a triangle approach. They've done this successfully past (3-0 win last season) and that's how they set out against us.

So how did we fare defensively?

Looking at clearances, tackles, and interceptions, we see most of these actions took place on the wings - mostly on the left-wing - which makes sense as Chilwell is the most direct attacking full-back which opens up space.

Another sign of defensive stability is how we limit the opposition's penetration in one's own half.

Looking at Sheffield United's passing inside our own half, we mostly constrict them to the wings and contain them there. In all 90 minutes of play, only 3 passes made to our pen.

Let's switch over to player performances and one name has to be discussed first: Hakim Ziyech.

Here is his action-map in Sheffield United's half.

What we see is a beautiful distribution of long switches and penetrative passes into the penalty area.

Another player that I thought was interesting was Mason Mount.

His pass-map shows something we are starting see:

a) provide attacking support in the left half-space
b) long, accurate switches to the right-hand side to open up the flanks

Next up, pass tables and xT/PVA analysis!

Before we move on, some passing maps from Chelsea's general game:

@WidePlaymakerV3's requests for progressive pass-maps for Reece James and Hakim Ziyech:

Other passing categories:

Pass table

Key things to pick up:

a) there is still a lot of side-ways passing occurring within Chelsea's defence
b) we really need to start improving on providing stable service to our forwards

Looking at which players increased our chances of scoring through passes, we see a clear leader.

Hakim Ziyech whose passing increased our chances of scoring by 98.6%. That number is really high because of our second goal - Ziyech's cross practically was near the goal-post.

Oh and Hakim also broke my xT model

He probably broke my model because I did not take away corners but still...crazy crazy addition to Chelsea's attack

Looking at where we had the most momentum, it was right before half-time and near the ending where we had already scored our goals.

Still need to work on how we can go into conceding patches where we get completely out-played something which happened in the start+right after HT.

Here's am xT-momentum graph which measures in which periods were we "threatening" the moment either through shooting/goal-scoring.

This matches up with what we saw with the PVA-Momentum graph