In one of the strangest signings of the summer, Joao Felix has rejoined Chelsea from Atletico Madrid. Returning to the club where he had an underwhelming loan spell two seasons ago, Felix is reportedly an expensive makeweight in the deal to take Conor Gallagher to Madrid. But where others see confusion (and an increasingly bloated squad), Adam Clery explains why, against the odds, this is actually a transfer that might work out well for Enzo Maresca's Chelsea.
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00:00Right, hello there everybody, Adam Cleary from 442 here, and Zhao Felix to Chelsea?
00:11Er, no, no me neither.
00:16Yep, no that was the entire intro, right, Zhao Felix is going back to Chelsea after
00:22he underwhelmed all season at Barcelona, after he underwhelmed for half a season at Chelsea.
00:29I am going to try and find the positives in this, but it's not exactly a transfer that gets your pants off, is it?
00:34Some talk right now is that such is the convoluted web of s**t that is Chelsea's financial situation
00:42and transfer policy, that the only reason this deal is happening in the first place
00:46is because the Samu Omrodian, I can never say his name, that deal fell through,
00:51and Madrid can now not buy Conor Gallagher unless Chelsea give them a fat stack of cash to do so,
00:57so they just had to buy somebody, anybody from their squad, and as Zhao Felix still has a Tesco club card
01:04and a Soho house membership, he made the most sense.
01:08But we're not getting into that, right, this is a tactics channel, and from a tactics perspective,
01:13Zhao Felix, and I can't believe I'm saying this, does bizarrely make a lick of sense.
01:22And I know you'll find the positives in anything this large, so first up, let us look at the current Chelsea squad.
01:31Now I will be fair here, right, I found this on Reddit, I think it was made by the guys at 90 Minutes,
01:36and it is slightly out of date, so it's not quite as bad as it looks.
01:39Now obviously this is way too many players, but they have moved Beach on, Alfie Gilchrist has gone on loan,
01:46Humphries I think has just left today, Ugo Chukwu, is he at Southampton?
01:51I think I may have seen that somewhere.
01:52And I've just checked the internet and Wiley has gone as well, whoever that is.
01:58But because it is slightly out of date, Pedro Neto isn't on this, so he needs to go on here along with Zhao Felix.
02:05So that's like five young squad players out, two senior first team players in.
02:11And that basically means of all the players in this area of the graph, you are allowed to pick six for any one game.
02:20So where the f*** does Zhao Felix go?
02:24Well, and let's get rid of this, alright, this was the starting line-up against Manchester City.
02:31And I can't believe I'm saying this, right, but for all the options Chelsea had in this game,
02:37all the subs they made, all the different things they tried to do,
02:39they were actually crying out, genuinely, for a player like Zhao Felix.
02:46It's worth pointing out, by the way, this is not the sort of set-up we were expecting to see from Maresca.
02:51He massively favours a 4-3-3, so it remains to be seen whether this is what his Chelsea side look like,
02:57or whether this is just how we wanted the set-up to play against City.
03:00Because what we would normally expect is one player in the pivot, then two eights either side.
03:05And as we saw at Leicester, it's the role of one of these eights to not just get up and sort of be a number 10,
03:10but to join in with the centre-forward play as well.
03:13But instead, against Man City, he had Caicedo and Lavia both sitting nice and deep,
03:17and he found a way to get Enzo Fernandez in this squad by using him simply as a number 10.
03:23And if you are a Chelsea fan, and you really like Enzo, then I hope you won't mind me saying this,
03:28because I like him as well, but he was rubbish.
03:33Chelsea had genuinely very good spells in that game, where they got on top of Manchester City,
03:38where they dominated the possession, they had them camped into their own box,
03:41and every time the ball fell to Enzo in an attacking area, his touch wasn't there.
03:47His instincts as a 10 aren't quite right.
03:50Like, don't get me wrong, there is a play-making aspect to a number 10.
03:54We're expected to drop off, get on the ball, create chances, feed your teammates, make things happen.
03:59Enzo's very good at that, but there's also an onus on you to be another goal threat.
04:04And that is, for all of his qualities, a part of his game that is absolutely rubbish.
04:09This is his heat map from the Manchester City match, where there was ample opportunity to be a goal threat,
04:14to get in the box, to support Jackson, and instead, that's few and far between.
04:19Instead, he wants to float on the outside of the box, or drop all the way back and get involved in the build-up.
04:24If you look at his shooting numbers as well, he's never going to be somebody who provides you that kind of direct goal threat.
04:29Like, he gets a high volume of shots off, but if you look at the average distance of them,
04:35they're almost always long ranges from outside the box.
04:38And then if you also look at his clinicity, which I'm like 80% sure is a word, he scores very low for that.
04:45Like, he's not great at getting them on target, and this small decimal here means it basically works out
04:51that he needs like 20, 21, 22 shots per goal, which is a lot.
04:56And a quick one, for those of you who care about XG, because I know that's not everybody,
05:00if you compare his actual goals output with the kind of output XG says he should have,
05:05he's even underperforming there.
05:07When you remove penalties from the equation, he is in the bottom 1% of Premier League midfielders
05:15for being good in front of goal.
05:17So, and I appreciate I haven't actually talked about the person who is the subject of this video,
05:22if Chelsea are amenable to playing this 4-2-3-1 and having someone in the pocket behind Nicholas Jackson,
05:30Enzo Fernandes, buddy, you just ain't that guy.
05:33But do you know who might actually be that guy?
05:38João Felix.
05:40Now, first up, was he largely crap for Barcelona last season?
05:44Yes, yes he was.
05:46And was he also largely crap for Chelsea the six months before that?
05:50Yes, also he was.
05:52And if we show you those exact same statistics that we just showed you for Enzo Fernandes,
05:56first off, in his loan spell at Chelsea, and also in his most recent season at Barcelona,
06:01he's not offering you anything different there, really.
06:04Like startlingly similar to Enzo Fernandes, he winds up with this really high shot output,
06:10but when you start measuring the quality of those shots in terms of how many he needs to get a goal,
06:15where he's having them from, how many of them actually end up in the back of the net,
06:18how many of them end up in the back of the net,
06:20comparative to what the XG says they should be ending up in the back of the net,
06:24that's really bad. That's really bad.
06:27So what gives? Like, João Felix is a player who's had a great reputation through most of his career
06:32as a deadly, intelligent, technically gifted player in the opposition box.
06:38So what's been going wrong for him the last 18 months?
06:41Well, the issue largely has been positional, right?
06:45This is his seasonal heat map from the last 12 months at Barcelona,
06:49and you can see he's doing everything, almost, on the left-hand side of Barcelona's attack.
06:55He will drift into the middle, yes, because he likes to do that,
06:57and he also offers a bit of a box threat, because he plays for Barcelona,
07:01you would expect that, but by and large, he is stuck all the way out here.
07:06And that's because, largely, there wasn't a number 10 position in Xavi's Barcelona.
07:11They had a 4-3-3 as well. Occasionally, they'd do something mad,
07:14like stick Rafinha in one of the eight positions so he could get up and support,
07:18but there was no direct sort of second striker pocket role.
07:22So Felix either had to play as the centre forward, which he was never going to do
07:26if Lewandowski is fit, or he was stuck all the way out here.
07:29And now, let's look at his seasonal heat map from when he was at Chelsea.
07:33Now, it is a little bit more weighted into his favourite area,
07:37because Lampard, especially, would occasionally use him as a false nine,
07:41and he would drop off, or he would play up front with Havard,
07:44so he was occupying the central areas a little bit more,
07:47but also, he was occasionally stuck all the way out on the left-hand side.
07:51And I mean, Chelsea fans, you won't need me to remind you of this,
07:54the back half of that season was about as cluttered and disorganised
07:58and all over the place as any team you've ever seen.
08:01So I'm not going to come down too hard on a player like Xavi,
08:04but not really maximising the most of his minutes,
08:07that was hard to say, in the centre of the pitch.
08:09So, long story short, the nearer you can get Xavi to this favoured central area
08:15that allows him to either be a box threat when he's coming from a 10,
08:18or to drop off into it if he's playing as a centre-forward
08:21and do a little bit of creation, the better he theoretically is, right?
08:26Well, if we go back one season further to when Madrid and Simeone
08:30were using him this way, those numbers then change dramatically.
08:35I mean, he's still got the same high shot volume,
08:38but the quality of those shots is absolutely night and day.
08:41Like, they're way more accurate, they're from much better positions.
08:45When you compare them to the XG, he starts to over-perform,
08:48meaning there's a sort of deadliness to his finishing.
08:51And when you start looking through all his other stats from that season,
08:54you start to see the kind of player he's capable of being
08:57when he's used the right way.
08:59Like, his passing numbers massively improve as well
09:01when he's able to drop into the areas he wants to be in.
09:04He can create chances for his teammates,
09:06he can play the ball into the penalty area,
09:08he can play the ball into the final third,
09:10he can create high-quality chances.
09:12Like, look at the assists.
09:13He was at the top 2% in La Liga for them last season.
09:16I think it's literally only Griezmann and Vinicius Jr. who are higher.
09:20And it gets even more impressive if you look at his off-the-ball numbers as well.
09:24Like, these are his defensive stats from that season.
09:27That is him top 1%, number one in the whole league
09:31for the amount of tackles won in the final third.
09:34So he wasn't just this great creative presence,
09:36he wasn't just this lethal goalscorer, he was a work-rate machine as well.
09:41Simeone had him hounding players down.
09:44And how was he able to be so much better?
09:46Well, you take his heat maps from the seasons he was bad,
09:49and you compare them to the heat maps from the seasons in which he was good,
09:52and that is a completely different footballer
09:55playing a completely different brand of football.
09:58So you just put aside for one second how insanely mad
10:02Chelsea's bats*** windmill-powered transfer ideas machine is,
10:07and you look at this player here, and what have you got?
10:10You've got somebody who, when you play a system that has a lot of possession,
10:14that squeezes the opposition back, that requires a box fret from midfield,
10:18that presses high, João Felix is one, undoubtedly,
10:23of the best players in the world at doing that.
10:27But, on the flip side, when you play a weird, incoherent brand of nothing ball,
10:33and you have to stick him all the way out on the left and just tell him to get on with it,
10:37he is dog eggs.
10:40And thus, perversely, this might work out really well for Chelsea,
10:44because if Mureska is going to go from this 4-3-3 into, instead, a 4-2-3-1,
10:51that is a position in which João Felix would arguably thrive better
10:56than any of the 8 million players they already have on their books.
11:01Now, just to give you the most direct comparison imaginable,
11:04this was an unbelievable chance for Chelsea to find themselves in 1-0 against Man City,
11:09and Fernandes just does not have the game brain to bring this under control
11:14and create something out of it. It just bounces off him like he's a training cone.
11:18You put João Felix in that exact position, and that is where he comes alive.
11:24Weirdly, my worry for Chelsea in this deal is actually not about João Felix,
11:29because the pieces do seem to line up quite nicely for him to slot into this team.
11:33My worry is that, given that we know Fernandes doesn't really sit comfortably as the pivot in a 4-2-3-1,
11:40my God, we saw that last season, this creates yet another world-beating star in this squad
11:48on enormous wages, who now doesn't feel like they're an instant part of that first XI.
11:54Like, to put that another way, what I mean is that this is yet another Chelsea transfer
11:59that does not address one of the current problems in the squad. It merely creates one all of its own.
12:07Unless, and we'll whisper this one very quietly, unless the plan is not to play him as a 10
12:15or to play him on the left-hand side. The plan is to replace Nicholas Jackson with him.
12:21Because then, if you do stay as a 3, and you're actually playing him as a false 9,
12:26and he's dropping out of that position, all of a sudden, any of the innumerable, excellent Chelsea-wide players
12:33who like to attack the box, and possibly even a Fernandes or a Dewsbury Hall doing it from a deep run in midfield,
12:39they've got the space to do that. And you've got this brilliant, technically gifted forward
12:44who will float all around to find the spaces that this movement creates and attack the box as and when he feels the need.
12:52Now, I mean, I don't think this actually will be the plan for Chelsea, because if this was some idea Maresca had
12:57in the back of his head, I think you would have seen them linked with all manner of similar centre-forwards
13:02across the summer. But it is, nonetheless, an option that suddenly avails itself to him.
13:08But obviously, trying to predict what Chelsea are going to do, either in a transfer window or just a game of football,
13:15is probably the stupidest thing I could do on this channel, so we'll leave it there.
13:19Now, of course, if you are a Chelsea fan, the comments section is right there.
13:25I have no idea how to feel about this team going into the season. I was very positive in pre-season,
13:30but the more mad things happen, the harder it becomes to convince yourself that it's all going to come together.
13:36So what do you think? All thoughts, feelings, opinions, and even just starting XI's at this point,
13:42appreciate it down there, so please do go and fill your boots. I'm down to my last two weeks
13:47of reminding you all about this, but I, me, idiot boy with no knees, bad heart,
13:52and generally just quite physically pathetic, I am doing the Great North Run sooner than I wish it to be,
13:59but I'm doing it to raise money for MIND, who are a mental health charity here in the UK.
14:03I'll stick a link down below if you'd like to read about why this is a very important cause to me
14:08and why I'd really like to raise as much money as possible. And if you have got a couple of quid
14:13sitting down the back of the sofa or in your back pocket, any donations do go so much further
14:18than you would possibly believe, so they are gratefully, gratefully received.
14:22Which does always feel like quite a weird thing to ask for when you're doing content on one human being
14:29who's going for like 30, 40, 50 million, but regardless, back here in the real world,
14:34anything you're able to spare means the world.
14:38You get me on all the socials, at Adam Cleary, C-L-E-R-Y.
14:41You should absolutely pick up a copy of 442, even though I haven't got one to hand in this video
14:46from all good retailers, and the socials for the brand, they are in the corner of the video.
14:50And until next time, how long have we got left in the transfer window?
14:54Like eight, nine days or something like that?
14:56I've been Adam Cleary, who knows what's gonna happen, but I'll see you when it does.
15:01Goodbye!