There is no more modern type of goal in elite football — and arguably none which more effectively infuriates supporters of the side conceding it — than a goalkeeper losing the ball to an opposing attacker having deliberately lingered in possession to “bait the press”.
Robert Sanchez has not conceded one of these goals in the first three months of his Chelsea career, but he has come perilously close to doing so on several occasions.
In the 24th minute of last month’s Carabao Cup tie against Brighton & Hove Albion at Stamford Bridge, for example, he lines up this risky pass down a narrow corridor formed of three opposition players towards a gap in midfield into which his team-mate Cole Palmer is moving:
The ball instead goes straight to the feet of Joao Pedro, who steadies himself and then attempts to chip a stranded Sanchez — cue a sigh of relief from the ’keeper when the shot lands on the roof of his net:
Nine minutes later, another Sanchez pass creates danger for Chelsea as Moises Caicedo, under pressure as he receives the ball 25 yards from his own goal, goes down seeking a free kick…
…and Brighton are gifted another glorious chance:
This time, Sanchez parries Ansu Fati’s shot wide but, behind his goal, the anxiety of the supporters in the Matthew Harding Stand had turned to anger directed at their new keeper.
No doubt fresh in the collective memory were other similar brushes with disaster, such as this loose pass to Alexis Mac Allister which might have turned a 1-1 draw with Liverpool into a home defeat on the Premier League’s opening weekend in August if Darwin Nunez’s touch had been more assured:
Or this attempted pass to Caicedo against Fulham at the start of this month which Andreas Pereira easily picks off by sticking out a leg but, fortunately for Sanchez, cannot control or divert into the path of a team-mate:
It is a struggle to find Chelsea fans who are fully convinced by Sanchez as the club’s first-choice goalkeeper and potentially costly lapses like the ones detailed above are a big reason why. By virtually every metric, however, he has made a very positive start to life as Kepa Arrizabalaga’s replacement — particularly within the context of how new head coach Mauricio Pochettino wants his team to play.
The days of “If in doubt, get rid” are long gone at the top level of the game; this is the age of elite coaches preaching cat-and-mouse possession, requiring goalkeepers to make more complex decisions with higher stakes when the ball is at their feet than ever before.
Sanchez’s errant passes have been memorable, but they have also been few and far between.
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He has completed 77 of his 78 passes travelling between five and 15 yards and 138 of 141 going between 15 and 30 yards in the 2023-24 Premier League, contributing to an 88.4 per cent overall pass completion that is bettered only by his Brighton replacement Jason Steele (91.5).
The most striking thing about his distribution is just how often Sanchez attempts those short passes into the base of Chelsea’s midfield, as you can see from the graphic below:
Compare and contrast that with Arrizabalaga’s open-play distribution for the club last season, which alternated a fair number of central passes with balls into wider areas, particularly to his left:
This reflects a change of emphasis since Pochettino took over in the summer; he wants his two elite ball progressors in midfield — Caicedo and Enzo Fernandez — on the ball as early and as often as possible. Lateral passes to escape pressure have become options of last resort; the priority is to open up avenues for vertical passes, from either Sanchez or the defenders just in front of him, into midfield.
Chelsea create those gaps by splitting centre-backs Axel Disasi and Thiago Silva wide to either side of Sanchez when he has the ball, with both full-backs pushed on. This challenges opponents to commit most of the attacking half of their team to taking away all of the possible passing options once Caicedo and Fernandez present for the ball:
Sanchez is even encouraged to play these passes when opposing sides press high, with Chelsea confident they can move the ball quickly and accurately enough to generate an advantage elsewhere to progress the play.
Here, in that cup tie against Brighton, he aims a short pass towards Lesley Ugochukwu’s right foot (yellow arrow), recognising that the pressure is coming from behind his team-mate’s left shoulder (pink arrow):
This allows Ugochukwu to drop a shoulder, spin away from his direct opponent and compromise Brighton’s press by generating an opportunity to carry the ball forward into space:
Against the best pressing teams, this approach can be a real tightrope walk that requires the defenders’ spacing, Sanchez’s passing and the midfielders’ ability to create separation from their markers to all be near-perfect. But, so far, Chelsea have executed Pochettino’s build-up strategy very well and their success is reflected in many of the metrics.
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While it must be noted they are yet to play most of the other high-possession teams in the division, Chelsea rank second in the Premier League this season for average share of possession (63.1 per cent), touches (773), passes attempted (664) and passes completed (574) per 90 minutes, behind only champions Manchester City in all four categories.
Their high-risk approach with the ball has yielded a greater degree of control that has also helped improve their defence; Chelsea’s opponents are averaging 0.91 non-penalty expected goals (npxG) in the Premier League this season, significantly down from 1.36 in 2022-23. Opponent shots on target per 90 minutes have also dropped from 4.2 to 3.4.
With and without the ball, it helps that Sanchez — who had joined from Brighton and trained with his new team-mates for barely a week when he was thrust into the side against Liverpool, following Arrizabalaga’s swiftly-arranged loan to Real Madrid in the wake of Thibaut Courtois’ ACL knee injury — has been able to count upon a defensive unit in front of him that has remained largely unchanged through the opening two months of the season.
Disasi and Silva have been Chelsea’s centre-back pairing for every minute of the Premier League campaign so far, and left-back Levi Colwill has also started every match. The right-back situation has only been rendered unstable by Reece James’ ongoing injury struggles and Malo Gusto’s red card last month against Aston Villa.
In front of that group, Fernandez and Conor Gallagher have also started all eight league matches, with Caicedo, who wasn’t signed until the day after that opener against Liverpool, the only significant recent midfield addition to the starting XI.
“That’s a challenge for any keeper — feeling strong and secure in the players in front of you, being used to their decision-making processes and them consistently being in the right place at the right time (to show for the ball),” says Matt Pyzdrowski, a former professional goalkeeper and The Athletic’s goalkeeping analyst.
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“Every defender passes the ball a different way, so you build that familiarity for how you’re supposed to receive the ball. That will be key for Chelsea this year, to build on that familiarity. It all feeds into a goalkeeper’s confidence, which makes a goalkeeper play better.”
Sanchez, 25, has in turn given his team-mates confidence by using his 6ft 5in (197cm) frame to command his penalty area in a manner that was simply beyond the much smaller Arrizabalaga (6ft 1in), who successfully intercepted only 15 crosses in the entirety of 2022-23 (in 29 league appearances), punching all of them. Over his first eight league games for Chelsea, Sanchez has already intercepted 11, catching 10 of them:
“Him adding that (aerial) dimension gives big security to the team because they can defend higher, knowing they have a goalkeeper who is strong in the air behind them,” Pyzdrowski adds. “They can do their jobs knowing that if there’s a high ball into the box, the keeper is coming out and there’s no hesitancy. It makes their jobs easier.”
Chelsea conceded 12 goals from set pieces in 2022-23. There has been just one goal by that route this season: Nayef Aguerd nodding in a peach of a corner from James Ward-Prowse that found him unmarked at the back post for West Ham early in Sanchez’s second appearance in August. Replacing Arrizabalaga with Sanchez is one of many contributing factors to that improvement, but it is significant.
Sanchez has also made a positive start at Chelsea in terms of his shot-stopping.
There have been no obvious errors in any of the five open-play goals he has conceded, though some questioned how Villa striker Ollie Watkins’ well-struck shot from a tight angle was allowed to squeeze through his legs last month.
That game also featured several outstanding and acrobatic Sanchez interventions, including one leap to tip over a Nicolo Zaniolo volley that won the Premier League’s Save of the Month award for September. Overall, he has conceded 1.5 goals fewer than expected so far, ranking him eighth among the division’s starting goalkeepers.
But it is Sanchez’s distribution that has dominated the conversation around him so far, and it will likely continue to do so as Chelsea embark on a much more daunting run of fixtures.
Chelsea also looked closely this summer at the man who is expected to start in goal for Arsenal at Stamford Bridge on Saturday.
David Raya compared favourably to Sanchez by most of the advanced goalkeeping metrics last season, but west London neighbours Brentford’s £40million ($48.6m at the current rate) asking price was deemed excessive and Ben Roberts, global head of goalkeeping at Cobham and previously on the staff at Brighton, was a key champion of Sanchez.
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In these opening weeks, Sanchez has flashed plenty of the talent that so beguiled Roberts and thrown himself into Pochettino’s demanding, high-risk style of possession play. But things are about to get harder; Arsenal are the first of a run of teams Chelsea will face over the next six weeks who are better equipped to press them into costly mistakes.
What happens when Sanchez makes an error that leads directly to an opposition goal? How will Chelsea fans react? It is unlikely that Pochettino will hold it against him, given that he praised the Spaniard’s “character” to tighten up his distribution after hitting two loose passes against Brighton and added that the rest of the team did not “provide good angles to play” in the first half of the game.
“The coaches who want to play out understand that (mistakes) are part of the role, but they want a goalkeeper who can minimise those mistakes,” Pyzdrowski adds.
If your job demands that you court disaster on a regular basis, disaster will at some point befall you.
But by playing in the manner that Pochettino wants with this level of competence, Sanchez is adding more to Chelsea than the occasional loose pass might take away.
Additional reporting: Mark Carey
(Top photo: Ryan Pierse/Getty Images)
