Chelsea FC: Analysing Blues top transfer targets stats -analysis

Chelsea FC transfer target: Danny Drinkwater

Leicester City’s Danny Drinkwater has also been heavily linked with a move to the Blues. Drinkwater is viewed by Conte as a back-up midfielder and he will also slot in nicely alongside N’Golo Kante when he does play. N’Golo Kante previously won the Premier League title with Leicester where he played alongside Drinkwater.

The 27-year-old would be a great fourth choice central midfielder for Chelsea FC. He may even battle new signing Tiemoue Bakayoko or Cesc Fabregas for the midfield spot. Competition is great to have in order to motivate the players.

Drinkwater made 29 appearances for Leicester City last season. And while Leicester may have had a poor season which would’ve affected his form, he still returned reasonable numbers.

He scored one goal and made one assist. Hardly anything to write home about but making goals was not his job at Leicester. He was there to break up play and to start attacks. However, it’s worth pointing out that he made 7 assists in the title-winning season prior.

His discipline wasn’t great either, last season, after getting 6 yellow cards.

So he doesn’t create goals and he gets a lot of yellow cards. So what does he do?

Well Drinkwater managed  to get a very decent return of 2.9 tackles per game and 1.3 interceptions per game.

It seems Drinkwater is also adept at long passing with an average of 3.7 successful long passes per game. This would benefit Chelsea FC as right now, N’Golo Kante tends to pass it short to the nearest teammate while Bakayoko also tends to make short passes. Although Chelsea have Fabregas who is obviously very adept at long passes so this attribute is maybe not needed but it could come in handy if Cesc gets injured.