Is Eden Hazard Contributing To Chelsea’s Form?

Looking at it from almost any vantage point, Eden Hazard is having an excellent season. The player that struck fear into Premier League defences during Chelsea’s 2014-15 title-winning campaign before disappearing from view last season has returned to strut his impish style across England. The statistic of nine goals in 21 Premier League matches compared with just four from the whole of last season tells its own story about the Belgian’s metamorphosis.

The slender tally of three assists officially attributed to him by the Premier League is rather surprising but does not convey the enormous impact that he has had upon the Chelsea team given the amount of involvement he has in almost every attacking move. Hazard’s influence is not really measurable by conventional metrics. His movement off the ball, his one-twos with teammates in tight situations, the little flicks around the corner and the ability to command the attention of multiple opponents to free up space for others are just some of the many tricks up his sleeve that all help to win games for Chelsea. They will not turn up on any stat sheet but each are as invaluable as they are unplayable.

And yet the feeling still persists that there is still a lot more to come from Hazard. In his player of the year campaign of 2014-15, he started all 38 Premier League games that season and dominated virtually every one of them. He was the crucial cog as Chelsea feasted on opponents before Christmas and was the driving force behind the team’s grind to the title in the New Year. Although Hazard might have eventually fallen out with Jose Mourinho in the latter’s final few months at the club, the Portuguese relied on him more than other player due to his knack for regularly turning games in Chelsea’s favour.

This season, Hazard has mesmerised on several occasions and has helped provide Antonio Conte with some dizzying attacking play that many teams have found hard to live with. But although there are still many games in which he seems to occupy his own plane of footballing existence, there have been a few when he has fallen short of the lofty standards he has set. Of course, even the very greatest players the world has ever seen have there off days, footballers are human after all. Though it should be noted that by the time Chelsea face Liverpool, for their next league clash on Jan. 31st it will be over a month since Hazard last found the back of the next, a penalty against Bournemouth on Dec. 26th. The clock needs to be rewound more than three weeks further to find his last goal from open play, the clincher in the 3-1 win at Manchester City on Dec. 3rd.

Goals aren’t everything, however, and it isn’t to say that Hazard has not been effective in the meantime. One only needs to look at the 3-0 win at Leicester where he played as a false nine and played a pivotal role in dismantling the defence of the reigning Premier League champions. But that was sandwiched by less impactful displays in the 2-0 loss at Tottenham and last Saturday’s 2-0 win over Hull, in which there was plenty of endeavour from him and all his usual jinking and darting runs but little end product.

Against Hull in particular, he saw plenty of the ball and could be seen popping up all along the breadth of the pitch to help influence the play and disrupt the concentration of the opposition defence. But he didn’t manage to produce anything that could genuinely be labelled as decisive or penetrating. In fairness, Hull’s defence were extremely well organised and the particularly impressive Harry Maguire curtailed many of Hazard’s forays before they really got going. It wasn’t that his play was predictable, just that it was one of those days where nothing quite came off and it wasn’t in isolation.

Hazard, however, is unlikely to stay out of the limelight for long. If last season can be written off as an aberration born out of a combination of discontent, fatigue and injury, the 26-year-old has rarely been out of form for any serious length of time. During his five seasons at the club he has been used to having the occasional lull but they have often just been the calm before the storm. Even when he suffered a slight dip at the beginning of this season — where he scored none and registered just one assist in the four games in September and the beginning of October — he then responded by netting five times in his next four outings. With Chelsea’s next two league fixtures being potentially decisive contests against Liverpool and Arsenal, it would be the perfect time for Hazard to slip back into the goalscoring groove.