The Debrief: Sterling And Jorginho Shine At Goodison
From the official Chelsea FC website:
The Premier League is back and so is the Debrief! Here we pore over all the analytic and tactical talking points from our opening-day victory at Everton…
The Blues left Goodison Park with all three points thanks to Jorginho’s first-half penalty, which came deep into added time, with a hard earned and professional performance ensuring the win at a notoriously difficult place to play
Here’s a rundown of the key discussion points…
Sterling stars on debut
If you were excited about the arrival of Raheem Sterling this summer then his Premier League debut for the Blues must have really whetted the appetite for more!
The summer signing from Manchester City started in a front three, alongside Kai Havertz and Mason Mount, at Goodison Park and shone on his league debut.
The forward twice went close to opening his account – seeing a first-half strike chalked off for offside and then being denied late on by a superb Everton block – as well as constantly causing the home defence problems.
Raheem made two key passes in the game, completed three successful dribbles and had three shots at goal.
Although he couldn’t find the net on this occasion, going off this showing one suspects it won’t be long before he’s up and running in a Blues shirt…
Ice-cold Jorginho adds some heat
As our heat map below shows, Jorginho was at the heart of everything for Chelsea – both offensively and defensively.
The Italian was always an option for his Chelsea team-mates, taking the ball in tight spaces to help us begin attacks as well as shielding the defence when in transition.
His pass retention, along with midfield partner N’Golo Kante, was superb as the former Napoli man made a game-high 72 passes, with 83 per cent of those finding a Chelsea shirt.
Plus, when it mattered, the midfielder stepped up and kept his cool to slot home his penalty and ensured we took all three points!
No way through Edou
Since arriving at Chelsea from Rennes in 2020, Edouard Mendy and clean sheets have seemingly gone hand in hand.
After impressing throughout his Blues career to date, the Senegalese stopper continued in that vein for this campaign with another shutout to add to his collection.
The goalkeeper made a fabulous save to tip a goalbound James Tarkowski header over the bar in the first half, with the scores still goalless at this stage, before also keeping out an Abdoulaye Doucoure effort late on before then grabbing the ball following the scramble that ensued.
The shutout means Mendy has not kept a clean sheet in 47 per cent of his Premier League starts – 31 out of 66 starts – with only Manchester City’s Ederson having a higher clean sheet ratio (50 per cent) of ‘keepers to have started at least 50 games.
‘Chelsea Supporters Group’ can also be found on Twitter and Facebook
Sorry, Jorginho was absolutely dire.
High passes (with not a particularly impressive accuracy) does not correlate to a good performance.
Have to agree, generally way too slow which means Sterling suffered same problem as Lukaku, Werner and various others, making runs off the last defender while IT Fanny’s around trying to decide which sideways pass to make. Way too slow in recovery as well