Chelsea exposed by Newcastle despite dominating key stat

Chelsea exposed by Newcastle despite dominating key stat

Chelsea exposed by Newcastle despite dominating key stat

Chelsea were dominated in the xG battle by Newcastle, and can have no complaints about their defeat.

The Blues only managed their goal through a stunning free kick from Raheem Sterling, and otherwise weren’t even getting shots away. Nicolas Jackson was back to his most toothless, and the creative influence of Cole Palmer was limited. Combine that with some bad defending, and you’ve got a recipe for defeat.

We’ve seen plenty of games this season where we’ve created a lot and failed to finish, today we constantly got to the edge of the box and then froze up.

Newcastle did well, but we weren’t confident or decisive enough in front of goal, and generating 0.65 xG in a game is not good enough.

Of course the relatively early red card wiped out a whole period of the game were we might otherwise have still seen some chances – but all of it is a product of how we played in the game.