100% duels, most passes completed, more xA than Neto and Palmer combined – defender dominates

Trevoh Chalobah was Chelsea’s joint top rated outfield player in yesterday’s defeat, showing his continued great season.

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We’re still sorting through the wreckage of Chelsea’s frustrating defeat to Arsenal last night, and there’s a lot to cover.

Big picture issues always dominate when we’re beaten by a rival, but in this case there is some interesting micro detail to drill down into too.

In a team with some pretty mediocre ratings, two outfield players managed to get a 7.1 according to FotMob, when nobody else was topping 6.8. One of them was Trevoh Chalobah, who put in another rock solid performance in the back line.

He was paired up with Mamadou Sarr, who was making his Premier League debut. But Chalobah helped keep things calm, despite having a Robert Sanchez melt-down behind him for the first half an hour.

Chalobah passing stats show a man in full control

Trevoh Chalobah competes with Viktor Gyokeres. (Photo by Justin Setterfield/Getty Images)

The stats show why Chalobah got such a good score. As always, he was super composed in possession. He had 78 passes completed, miles clear of anyone else on the pitch. At a 96% completion rate, he kept it very clean. But he also managed 4 passes into the final third, completed 3 of his 4 long balls, racking up 0.24 expected assists, second most on the Chelsea team.

He won both his aerial duels and both his ground duels. He didn’t give away a foul either. You can’t ask for much more than that from a central defender being tested by a very physical team.

In other news…

Reece James was the other outfield player rated with a 7.1 in the game. He was even more effective than Chalobah, effectively delivering the goal and creating more attacking threat than most of his colleagues.

Check out the latest edition of Simon Phillips’ SPTC podcast here: