With more than half of the season gone, you would expect one of Chelsea’s many attacking players to be leading the goalscoring charts.
Mind you, after watching the Blues squander the few chances they had against Manchester City last weekend and failing to put away a plethora of sides over the last few months, it should come as no surprise that it is a midfielder who tops Chelsea’s goalscoring table.
That the club's leading goal scorer so far this season is Jorginho rather than Romelu Lukaku, Kai Havertz, Timo Werner, Christian Pulisic or Hakim Ziyech is surely an indictment of the problem Chelsea’s expected goalscorers are having putting the ball in the net.
It is no slander on Jorginho that he has nine goals in all competitions this season and in fact, topped Chelsea’s Premier League goalscoring table last term with seven.
The fact all nine of Jorginho’s goals during the current campaign have been penalties – as were his eight last season, is quite remarkable.
Well, maybe not so remarkable for a specialist penalty taker, which undoubtedly is what Jorginho is.
The Italian's penalties, with their trademark ‘hop, skip and a jump’ before waiting to see which way the keeper will dive and then usually slotting it past them, have become quite something since his arrival at Chelsea in the summer of 2018.
Our first glimpse of this unusual but clearly effective style came on his Premier League debut against Huddersfield Town on August 11, 2018, when he slotted home a penalty after Marcos Alonso had been brought down by Christopher Schindler on 45 minutes.
Back then Eden Hazard was Chelsea’s designated penalty taker so Jorginho had no more opportunities to show us what he could do from the spot that season, other than in penalty shootouts.
Jorginho scored the fourth penalty out of five to beat Spurs in the Carabao Cup semi-final that season and he scored the third in the shootout against Eintracht Frankfurt in the Europa League semi-final. But it was his penalty miss against Manchester City in the Carabao Cup final that season that cast doubts on his idiosyncratic penalty taking style.
When it works it looks great, but when the keeper, City’s Ederson in this case, decides to wait rather than committing, then Jorginho can be made to look foolish as the keeper has an easy save to make.
To be fair to Jorginho, it has only happened three times – not including penalty shootouts – in his Chelsea career to date and all came last season: against Liverpool in a 2-0 home defeat when his penalty was saved by Allison Becker; the 4-0 victory over Krasnador away in October when he hit the post; the 3-1 defeat away to Arsenal in December when his 90th minute penalty was saved by Bernd Leno.
Three missed penalties in four months would seem to be something of a crisis for a player so accustomed to putting them away with ease. Having then missed in the European Championship final for Italy against England and in the crucial World Cup Qualifier against Switzerland would probably have felled lesser men, but not Jorginho.
He has simply ‘hop, skipped and jumped’ his way to scoring a further 13 penalties for Chelsea since the Arsenal failure without missing one to date. Evidence of a very cool customer indeed.
His coolness under the intense pressure of a penalty kick is borne out by how many of Jorginho’s penalties could be deemed crucial in terms of the match situation.
Just this season he has held his nerve to score the equaliser in the 1-1 draw against Man Utd at home in November, scored the winner in injury time in the 3-2 victory over Leeds United in December and put the Carabao Cup quarter final against Brentford to bed with the 85th-minute winner.
His record of 24 penalties scored and 3 missed currently puts him third in Chelsea’s all-time penalty scorers table behind Hazard (25 scored and five missed), and Frank Lampard (who scored a remarkable 49 penalties but missed nine).
However, Jorginho’s success rate of 87.5% beats both Hazard and Lampard with 80% and 81.5% respectively. Jorginho will surely overtake Hazard this season but is unlikely to overhaul another goalscoring record held by Lampard.
He could well go down as Chelsea’s most consistent penalty taker, though. While Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink has a 100% record having scored 12 out of 12 between 2000 and 2004, Jorginho has taken over double the number of penalties and the more you take the greater the risk of missing, which counts for more in my book.
When recalling great penalty takers for Chelsea, my mind immediately went back to Frank Leboeuf and Graham Roberts.
Both Roberts’ and Lebeouf’s numbers and consistency were incredibly similar as penalty takers. Roberts scored 16 out of 18 penalties and LeBoeuf 15 out of 17. Their success rate was comparable to Jorginho’s with 87.5% and 86.5% respectively.
And like Jorginho, they both went on long penalty scoring runs without missing: Roberts scoring nine and LeBoeuf scoring 12 penalties before missing. Unlike Jorginho though, they both preferred to go for power over finesse.
It was all so very different from Chelsea’s penalty taking during the 1980s when I first ventured down to Stamford Bridge.
Penalties in those days was a hybrid of pass the parcel and a lottery. In 1983, Chelsea’s new signing and soon to be Golden Boy striker, Kerry Dixon, quite rightly was handed penalty taking duties as the main striker.
He netted his first three against Brighton, Grimsby and Shrewsbury but then contrived to miss two against Portsmouth; the first saved by Portsmouth keeper Alan Knight and the second hitting the bar. He followed that with another penalty miss against Brighton in the next game, with Joe Corrigan making the save.
In those days, Chelsea didn’t muck about and Dixon was replaced as penalty taker by Nigel Spackman, who scored against Cardiff and then had his next one saved against Shrewsbury.
The poisoned chalice was then passed to Pat Nevin who scored against Portsmouth and then had his penalty against Grimsby saved in the match which Chelsea would eventually win through a Dixon goal redemptively assisted by Nevin to see Chelsea promoted to Division One.
Penalty taking passed on to Colin Lee in the 1984/85 season but he missed against West Ham and put the next one wide against Newcastle. Nevin returned for the next one against Man City in the Milk Cup and, of course, missed with one of the worst penalties ever as the ball trickled slowly on the muddy pitch towards City keeper Alex Williams.
It came full circle as Dixon resumed penalty talking duties, scoring two against QPR, before putting a penalty wide against Manchester United, netting against Wigan in the FA Cup and then missing the next one against Sheffield United in the Milk Cup.
Like many of a similar age, Dixon was my hero and that penalty miss against Manchester United in a 3-1 defeat was my first match at Stamford Bridge. I have only just about forgiven him.
It would be five years before he’d take another penalty for Chelsea as Chelsea passed the parcel yet again with David Speedie, Spackman (again), Mickey Thomas, Mickey Hazard, Keith Jones, Roy Wegerle and Gordon Durie all having a go
None of them were consistent penalty takers and it was just as well that Roberts took over penalty-taking duties in 1988. Dixon did take one more penalty for Chelsea...but he blasted it over the bar in a 1-0 defeat away to QPR in 1990.
Chelsea’s troubles with penalties in the 1980s from players you would naturally expect to thrive when faced with the opportunity to score from 12 yards, puts Jorginho, Roberts, and Frank Lebeouf’s success rate in perspective.
It takes a lot of courage and a lot of skill and technique, especially when the obvious pressure is added to by the match situation. When Jorginho steps up to take a penalty for Chelsea, I always feel very confident that he’ll score it, which given the penalty traumas I experienced with Chelsea in the 1980s is not something I say lightly.
If Jorginho carries on scoring penalties like he has since 2018 then he may well go down as Chelsea’s greatest specialist penalty taker in terms of coolness under pressure, technique and success rate.
At a time when Chelsea’s strikers and attacking players have forgotten how to put the ball in the back of the net, at least we can rely on Jorginho from the spot.
David Chidgey
@StamfordChidge
David Chidgey is on the Board of the Chelsea Supporters’ Trust and presents the award-winning Chelsea FanCast every Monday & Friday available from Acast, ITunes, Spotify or chelseafancast.com
