The most surprising thing about Jadon Sancho’s brilliant goal against Tottenham was not that his low, arcing shot from outside the penalty area whipped into the net off Fraser Forster’s far post. It was that he decided to shoot at all.
Receiving the ball on the half-turn near the touchline, Sancho’s go-to move at Chelsea has been to play a well-timed, perfectly weighted pass infield to an underlapping runner. In the sequence below, that runner was Enzo Fernandez. But the Argentina international’s movement also opens up space for Sancho to dart into a more central area with the ball. On this occasion, he does, and actively hunts his own shot rather than searching for an incisive pass:
“In training, I’ve been working on my shooting a bit more,” Sancho told Sky Sports after the win at Spurs. “The staff and the players have been telling me to be a bit more selfish in front of goal, so I’ve been working on that.”
It was only Sancho’s sixth shot attempt in 10 league appearances for Chelsea (only seven of which have been starts), but he went on to have two more against Tottenham. This one came from a much more recognisable move: slipping in the underlapping Marc Cucurella from the left side, then moving diagonally into the penalty area to connect with the Spaniard’s deft return pass and poke a shot which Forster just managed to tip away from danger.
Sancho also hurt Spurs with his playmaking, dropping a shoulder to evade Timo Werner on the left flank before slipping a no-look diagonal pass into the box for Moises Caicedo to draw a reckless tackle from Yves Bissouma and win the first of two Chelsea penalties in the game.
It was a classic example of the qualities that Chelsea head coach Enzo Maresca was keen to highlight in Sancho. He had returned to the team with two assists from the right wing in a 2-0 away win over Heidenheim in the Europa Conference League.
“He is what we need, especially against a team that defends with a low block,” Maresca said of Sancho in his post-match press conference. “We need that quality in the last third, the last pass and he can shoot, sometimes he will shoot more than he did against Heidenheim. But I think he is going to help us a lot.”
Sancho’s second assist against the Bundesliga side was eerily reminiscent of his Borussia Dortmund days: sucking a defender towards him before initiating a slick one-two with Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall and then picking out Mykhailo Mudryk with a cutback to the edge of the box:
That outing was something of an exception in the early months of Sancho’s career at Chelsea. One significant reason why he is looking more like the best version of himself is simply that he is getting more opportunities to play in his favoured left-wing role than he did at Manchester United, or even at Dortmund.
Another is Maresca’s appreciation of the fact that Sancho is a footballer who does his best work in small spaces rather than big ones. He does not have the top speed nor lightning acceleration that helped make Eden Hazard so devastating at Chelsea, but he does possess a similar level of ball mastery and passing vision to the great Belgian.
In particular, he is a maestro at manipulating defenders with the ball to create valuable passing angles to team-mates. This sequence in his impressive Chelsea debut against Bournemouth in September was a sign of things to come: he moves down the left flank, drawing three defenders towards him with a series of body feints and jinks, before picking the perfect moment to poke the ball infield to a wide open Nicolas Jackson, who curls his shot narrowly over:
Sancho’s combination of ball-carrying and passing has already become an important element of Chelsea’s attacking play whenever he is on the pitch. The below totals are even more impressive when you consider he has played just 582 minutes in the Premier League this season, considerably fewer than many of his Chelsea team-mates; his 7.4 box entries per 90 minutes are the most of anyone in Maresca’s squad.
With three assists in his first nine Premier League appearances for Chelsea, Sancho has already equalled his assist totals in each of his two full seasons at United. In terms of creation, he already seems to be on a path back to something that more closely resembles the wing terror who racked up 45 assists in four full Bundesliga seasons with Dortmund.
But for his playmaking to be truly maximised he must also be a more consistent threat to score, which explains the recent emphasis on upping his shot attempts. Sancho has taken seven shots in his last five appearances across all competitions for Chelsea, having had only one in his previous seven. Even with this recent burst, he is still averaging fewer shot attempts per 90 minutes in the Premier League (1.2) than Maresca’s right-back/auxiliary No 8 Malo Gusto (1.4).
Sancho has never been a high-volume shooter. His career-high average of 2.2 attempts per 90 minutes (for Dortmund in the 2020-21 Bundesliga campaign) would rank well below Noni Madueke (4.3 shots per 90), Cole Palmer (3.5 shots per 90) and Jackson (3.1 shots per 90) at Chelsea in the Premier League this season.
But when he does shoot, Sancho has demonstrated the ability to be a highly efficient finisher. In his two best scoring seasons at Dortmund, he found the net with around 30 per cent of his shots, which is broadly in line with his conversion rate for Chelsea so far in 2024-25 (two goals from eight shots, or 25 per cent).
In that respect, he is also similar to Hazard, who frequently had to be cajoled by team-mates and a series of coaches to be more selfish in the final third. “I like to give my friends the glory in front of the camera and assist them as much as I can,” Sancho said with a smile in a recent interview with Sky Sports.
That creation alone is enough to make him highly valuable to Maresca, but if Sancho can balance his playmaking tendencies with scaling up his shot attempts, Chelsea may well see him blossom into the all-round attacking superstar that United thought they were getting from Dortmund three years ago.
(Top photo: Michael Steele/Getty Images)
