Why do Chelsea look so toothless from dead balls? – set-piece analysis

Chelsea have been one of the more underwhelming teams in the Premier League this season. From their slow start under Thomas Tuchel to their continued frustrations under Graham Potter, Chelseas season has been one to forget so far.

This club is under a rebuild, which has meant that everything is in transition, whether thats the staff behind the scenes or the tactical display on the pitch. After 17 Premier League games, they have only managed to score 20 goals and clearly lack both creativity and goal scorers. No one in the team has the killer instinct within them, or the hunger to get onto the end of a chance, which has been made evident during both open play and from set-pieces.

In the Premier League, Chelsea rank bottom for xG amassed from set plays with a value of 2.23. They have scored three goals from these situations, a Mason Mount free kick, a second-phase header from Havertz, and a Koulibaly volley. Since Graham Potter arrived at the club, Chelsea are yet to score directly from a delivery into the area from a set piece in the league, which is unacceptable after 11 games in charge. It has to be said that they have scored one against AC Milan in the UEFA Champions League.

Furthermore, Chelsea have the worst corner-to-shot ratio in the Premier League, with Chelsea players only getting a shot off from corners 33.73% of the time. From 83 corners, Chelsea have 1.56 xG, and a total of 0.056 xG per shot with only Leicester having a lower value for both statistics this season. This means that Chelsea regularly fail to create quality chances, and when they do get to a corner first, the quality of each chance is very low, meaning that its unlikely to ever result in a goal.

For the purpose of this tactical analysis, we will only look into Chelseas tactics during set pieces since Graham Potters arrival, to understand how theyve performed under him, and how it may look going forward. This set-piece analysis will show how Chelsea set up from both corners and free kicks to determine the reasons for their poor record. We will also conduct an analysis of how and where Chelsea may look to improve in this area of the game.

Failure to create against zonal defences

The first area in particular where Chelsea have underwhelmed is through the positioning of their attacking players. Like with their tactics and line-ups, Chelsea continue to change what they do from corners as well. The continuous change in positions can and has produced a few quality chances, but usually results in players mistiming their runs and corner takers hitting zones which nobody runs to. This leads to a high number of corners just being turned over through a lack of cohesion as a team, and a lack of preparation.

However, there are times when Chelsea make the wrong decisions after planning their corners. For example, in the screenshot below, Ruben Loftus-Cheek (red) is used as a blocker, to allow the ball to arrive into the front of the six-yard box. The point of a blocker is to create space behind him. The problem is that Chelseas players (green) who are being man-marked, all move into the six-yard box before the corner is taken. When that move happens, every man marker moves into the six-yard box, which solves half of Arsenals problem for them.

Rather than being preoccupied with both runners from deep and players inside the six-yard box, Arsenal can now focus all their efforts on zonally marking the six-yard line, with no other Chelsea player occupying any other zone. As a result, the zone which is the target for the corner has been closed off by Chelsea, who shoot themselves in the foot through their positioning.

We can see below, how Thiago Silva (green) is tracked by three Arsenal (red) players. It is easy for the Arsenal defenders to track this run, as Silva is only two or three yards away when the corner is taken, and so it becomes impossible for Silva to dismark himself from three players when he has to move three yards. Had the run started from deeper, Silva would have only been marked by one player, and the extra distance would have made it easier for him to lose his marker.

Furthermore, the target area for the crosser of the ball would become bigger, as the Arsenal zonal markers would be more spread out. Chelsea laid their cards out on the table before the hand was dealt, and so became very predictable and easy to defend against.