The mood inside Chelsea is calmer than you might imagine. Instead of panicking after another summer of heavy spending with an underwhelming start to the season, they have looked beyond the results, studied the data and concluded that the situation will improve – if they hold their nerve.
There is comfort to be found in numbers indicating that Mauricio Pochettino is pushing this young, expensively assembled squad in the right direction. While Chelsea are stuck in the bottom half of the Premier League table before they meet Fulham on Monday after picking up five points from their first six games, more than one statistical model suggests they should be much higher.
