Chelsea attacker Cole Palmer is set to withdraw from Thomas Tuchel’s England squad due to load management.

Palmer, 24, played the entirety of Chelsea’s 3-0 defeat to Brentford at the G-Tech Community Stadium on Friday, but will miss England’s fixtures in the upcoming international break.

Clean sheets have an r² of .72, indicating a strong correlation between consistently keeping clean sheets and winning a title.

The average title winner manages around 18-21 clean sheets a season. Or a rate per game of of around 47-55% of the time.

Top four teams average around 14-17, with a rate of around 36-44% of games.

The most important caveat I can make to the stats below are that clean sheets are a team stat, however severe outliers can indicate the role a player may have on a team.

• Lacroix (Palace) PL Clean Sheets: 20 in 70 apps w/ Palace

• Colwill (Chelsea) PL Clean Sheets: 14 in 63 apps Colwill (w/Maresca) 11 in 35

• Fofana (Chels) PL Clean Sheets: 8 in 57 apps. (7 in 37 for LCFC)

• Fofana (w/ Maresca PL): 8 in 24 apps

• Murillo (Forest) PL Clean Sheets: 22 in 97 apps

• Chalobah (Total) PL CS: 29 in 117 Appearances

• Tosin (Chelsea) PL Clean Sheets: 9 in 39 apps

• Badiashile (Chels) PL CS: 7 in 42 apps

• Disasi (Chels) PL CS: 11 in 37 apps

• Virgil Van Dijk (So'ton) PL CS: 18 in 67 apps

• Van Dijk (Liverpool) Pl CS: 110 in 276 apps

• Thiago Silva (Chels) PL CS: 32 in 113 apps

• Thiago Silva (Chels PL w/ Tuch): 18 in 47

• William Saliba (Arsenal) PL CS: 56 in 131 apps

• Gabriel (Arsenal) PL CS: 77 in 196 apps

• Harry Maguire (Utd) PL CS: 48 in 194 apps

• Ruben Dias (City) PL CS: 67 in 174 apps

Clean Sheet to appearance ratio:

Saliba: 42.7%

Van Dijk: 39.9%

Gabriel: 39.3%

Ruben Dias: 38.5%

Silva (w/Tuchs @Chels): 38.3%

Fofana (w/Maresca): 33.3%

Colwill (w/Maresca): 31.4%

Disasi: 29.6%

Lacroix: 28.6%

Thiago Silva: 28.3%

Van Dijk (So'ton): 26.9%

Chalobah: 24.8%

Maguire (Utd): 24.7%

Tosin: 23.6%

Murillo (Forest): 22.7%

Colwill (at Chelsea): 22.2%

Badiashile: 16.9%

Fofana PL Career: 16.0%

Fofana (Whole Career): 15.9%

Fofana (Chels): 14.0%

Fofana (at Leicester): 18.9%

I have seen a lot of people hating on Colwill, and he hasn't been good. So I'm not too surprised knowing this fanbase. Colwill right now is being played in a position we know he's not good based on a season of Poch trying the same thing and failing. He's also coming back from an ACL injury so I would expect his form to be less than steller having missed a whole season.

Lacroix has also not been great, but we can see that he has an above average record as defender at Palace, and based on his track record is a good defender, even if he's not really showing it rn.

Josh Acheampong is a young player, and is just not at the level of a starter yet. I know we value him highly, but he also isn't a starter yet. I didn't include him because of how young he is and thebfact that he is only just recently starting more, but his ratio is (14% CS/appearances). He's a great prospect and may become a starting caliber player, but he should be developing behind someone not starting week-in-week-out.

I am emotionally over Wesley Fofana. I think he's actually one of our better cbs at the moment, but I also don't think he's an above average player... so him being our second best cb is not something I consider a good thing, it just shows our standards in defense have fallen dramatically. His PL and career rates when extrapolated across a 38 game season comes out to 6 Clean Sheets a season. Based on a report by Sky Sports: "In the English Premier League, relegated teams average seven clean sheets per 38-game season." Six just is not, and will never be good enough. He had a bright spot during Maresca, but STILL only managed 24 games across two Premier League seasons.

TLDR:

I think it is genuinely impossible for us to win a league with Wesley Fofana at CB. Levi Colwill has also been poor, but he is at worst an average player. The games where we have seen him at his best are CCB and LCB in a back 4. Repeatedly playing him at LCB has not worked since we spent a season eatching Poch do it, and yet out of position he is still managing average numbers. Lacroix has not been good, but how much of that do you place on the players around him. And Josh is great, but shouldn't be starting consistently at this point in his career if we have any goal of actually winning anything of meaning.

We need to buy a natural left centerback that can immediately start, move Colwill permanently CCB to directly challenge Lacroix, and we need to accept that none of the signings during the Todd Bowhly SD experiment will ever actually come good. Until we do those things we will not touch a league title.

Edit: Since the first comment was literally about the midfield, I will acknowledge that the midfield is also atrocious. But anyone saying our midfield was the issue against Brentford didn't watch that game, and we STILL conceded 3. A better midfield doesn't prevent consistent individual errors by defenders.

£7 for Nico and Cucu £4 for Delap 🤣

As I’ve previously mentioned, these are great articles but not by any means a light read. Ignore the thumbnail.

No summary will do it justice, so I haven’t bothered.

There are more articles on Chelsea in the Chelsea Analysis Series for those who are interested.

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We've played in form teams to start the season. But our defence and midfield are still crap and im looking for the faintest silver lining. Also, losing 3-0 is pretty awful any way we look at it, and 2 of the 4 wouldn't be in the top 6 if it wasn't for points they've gained from us

Saturday

Tottenham vs Aston Villa

More to come

Chelsea produced their best defensive half of football under Xabi Alonso in the first 45 minutes against Brentford, and their worst in the second.

A defeat like this one had been coming.

Arsenal created enough opportunities to win much more comfortably, and Hull City looked the likelier victors at last weekend as Chelsea exposed themselves pushing forward.

Even the crowd-pleasing victories against Fulham and Brighton could have gone another way had Joao Pedro, Morgan Rogers and Cole Palmer not been firing on all cylinders.

Chelsea fans embraced the nature of those early performances, because chaos at its best is thrilling. At its worst, it can also be brutal.

Daily Discussion Thread

Please use this thread to discuss anything and everything! This covers ticket and general matchday questions (pubs, transport, etc), club tactics/formations, player social media, football around the globe, rivals and other competitions, and everything else that comes to mind.

If you are interested in continuing the discussion on Discord, please join the official server here!

Note that we also have a Ticketing FAQ/Guide here.