Chelsea brought their possession up from a lowly 43.9% possession to 53.7%, almost a full 10% for the entire match or 20% between halves. Also 43 crosses really shows you how little central players (Malouda, Torres) really impacted the game. A key player for Chelsea today who I have been critical of in the past was Raul Meireles, who did a nice job with timely passes and cutting off the Swansea attack…

Meireles today against Swansea: 1 shot, 85% (56/66) passing, 3 chances created, 1 tackle, 6 interceptions.

At the end of the match once again though a major talking point was Fernando Torres, who had another very poor game…

Torres today against Swansea: 1 shot (blocked), 61% (14/23) passing, 0 chances created. He received the ball 25 times in the match.

Combining these stats with his last Premier League match against Norwich, he has only 4 shots (none on goal), 66.7% (32/48) passing, and 0 chances created. People used to defend the lack of goal scoring by Torres by crediting his distribution as an asset, but now it’s even a stretch to say that.

As a final note, I’ll leave you with this…

Chelsea have lost only 1 of their last 13 matches

While many fans should be impressed by that statistic people cite the draws against easy teams and I have to finally cave and start agreeing with some of them. A positive is the Chelsea defense has improved and has kept a clean sheet in 4 of the last 5 matches – imagine where Chelsea would be if they were allowing goals at the same rate as earlier this season. The next Chelsea match is Sunday, February 4th at home against Manchester United.

What did you think of the performance by Chelsea against Swansea? Feel free to leave a comment below!