Chelsea
The 3-0 home defeat by Bournemouth may have suggested the wheels were coming off for Antonio Conte at Stamford Bridge, but the bigger picture is that Chelsea have been in solid form since the halfway point of the Premier League. No team has shot more frequently, or troubled the opposition keeper so often in that period. While results haven’t always followed, it is a good few months since a team shut down Chelsea entirely and stopped them creating chances.
Transfers may have looked a little choppy, and Conte appears to permanently live on the edge of disharmony, but as they wind up towards a big few weeks with the Champions League tie against Barcelona sandwiching trips to Old Trafford and the Etihad, the team is probably in better shape than might appear on the surface.
Bournemouth
The bottom of the Premier League has a distinctly compact look this season, but with four wins in their last six games Bournemouth have made what looks a decisive move towards the security of mid-table. It has come via genuine improvement too. Since the halfway point of the season they rank fourth for shots taken (around 16 per game) and close to Manchester City and behind only Chelsea for shots on target.
Their shots per game rate has increased by around five shots a game as the season has worn on and their on target rate has doubled. After a quiet start to the season, this column speculated whether Bournemouth used methods that enabled them to grow and find improved results as time moved on. Perhaps their fitness program is effectively tailored to give the team strength in mid-winter; once more results appear to support the idea that this could be the case. They may have also benefited from the coherence of retaining a manager and the positive effects of long-term planning. Their attack has really moved up a gear despite the absence of summer signing Jermain Defoe and having put four points between themselves and Watford in 11th, a top-half finish looks on the cards.
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Huddersfield
The life of a promoted team in the Premier League is rarely straightforward and it feels like we often see an early flush of form followed by a slow decline and drop down the table. For Huddersfield, the compressed nature of the league table may have concealed their lack of form, but a line was crossed this weekend: with Southampton and Swansea each gaining points, Town fell into the bottom three for the first time this season. Five defeats in a row and no wins since mid-December is the current cause for concern, while the Terries are now the joint-lowest scorers (alongside Swansea on 19 goals) and have the joint-second worst defence (alongside West Ham on 46 goals and behind only Stoke on 52).
There is little solace beyond the surface either, as they are taking just seven shots per game since the halfway point and only a quarter of the shots on target in their games, both totals that rank them in the bottom two during that period. A rescue act may need to come into play sooner rather than later, as Huddersfield face Chelsea, Manchester City and Arsenal in their last four games. The trajectory they are on does not bode well.
Swansea
Carlos Carvalhal has dragged Swansea right out of the mire and given them a fine chance of staying in the league. However, much like Paul Clement last season, the method behind getting their recent points looks hard to sustain. While their defeat of Arsenal was solid work - they outshot the Gunners and fully deserved to take something from the game - the 1-0 victory over Liverpool and Saturday’s point at Leicester can be filed as somewhat fortunate.
Against Liverpool and Leicester they mustered just three shots all game, yet contrived to score twice from those six efforts while allowing just one goal from the 30-plus shots they conceded. Clement never effectively got an attack functioning in his year at the Liberty Stadium, and the “great escape” he performed carried few signs of sustainability.
Carvalhal’s methods have brought results so far, but this isn't quite a team transformed - much like Huddersfield, any evaluation of their attack is poor. A rolling 10-game average of around seven shots per game is weaker than at any point in the last two seasons. More is still needed.
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