The season has ended and it’s safe to say that Chelsea is a club where it’s never quiet. One of my favourite strikers in the game is said to be disrespectful and to have a bad season. But how did Romelu Lukaku really do at Chelsea in the Premier League 2021/2022? Time to find out.
I will use data to analyse his performances in this piece. I will use event data provided by Understat/Opta and match data provided by Wyscout. The comparisons will be made with players with at least 900 minutes/10 90s in the Premier League.
Season stats
In the image above you can see a percentile radar. This shows us how well Lukaku has performed in certain data metrics in the 2021/2022 Premier League season compared to his peers.
If we look at this particular data we can speak of an average to relatively poor season — bearing in mind that Lukaku has played the 37th most minutes of the strikers we look at. In the shooting metrics, he does score above average in each category bar the shots on target in % metric.
In the following aspects of this analysis, we will look closer at the shooting and assists metrics
Shooting
In the scatterplot above you can see the metrics of shots per 90 and Expected goals per 90 (xG per 90) combined in one graph. If we want to look at the volume of shots Lukaku has and the corresponding quality of the shots or likelihood of that shot being converted into a goal, this graph helps with that.
If we look at Lukaku’s data we see that he has 2,16 shots per 90 during the Premier League season and a corresponding xG per 90 of 0,42. If you compare that to his peers, he scores slightly above average, as he is the top-right quarter of the graph.
So where did Lukaku shoot from this season?
In the shot map above you can see Lukaku’s shots in the 2021/2022 Premier League. It show all shots, with the red dots corresponding with the goals. He had 43 shots of which 8 went in goal with a corresponding xG of 7,02. This means that he is slightly overperforming.
When we look closer into his xG, we can see that he has 3,44 xG with his left foot (+0,44), 1,42 xG with his head (-0,58), and 2,16 xG with his right foot (-0,84). 6,07 xG comes from open play.
Assists
In the scatterplot above you can see the metrics of expected assists and assists per 90 combined. It shows us how well Lukaku is doing in the expected metrics in comparison with the actual assists given.
As you can see Lukaku has quite a low xA per 90 of 0,10, but what’s even more telling is that he hasn’t given a single assist during the season. He was expected to assist 3,36 times this season and not given one — meaning he underperformed significantly.
Comparison with peers
Final thoughts
Is Lukaku a bad striker?No. Did he become worse over one season? No. There are many reasons why he hasn’t been doing as well as we would expect. While tactics are a big part of it, if we look at the likelihood of contributing to goals, we can make a few claims. He has scored more than you might expect, but also has assisted less than you might aspect.
