Chelsea need streaky Timo Werner to find his groove

Tammy Abraham was smiling anyway, as any striker would after scoring twice. So it was never going to take much to coax a chuckle out of him. But one particular question did the trick.

"So.. do you think Timo was shooting?"

Abraham composed himself, just as he did when reacting to the German's scuff through the legs of West Ham defender Vladimir Coufal, positioning his right foot with Pong-like precision to guide the ball into the far corner to make it 2-0. "I don't know if he was shooting," Abraham responded, before talking up a solid performance to restrict a losing run to just two matches.

We can be confident Werner was shooting. For one thing, he does it a lot. His 36 shots taken so far in the Premier League are the most at Chelsea by 11, and the ninth most in the league overall. It wasn't out of character.

It was also an effort in keeping with his work on Monday night and over the last few weeks. Snatched, miscued and tame, reflective of the frustrations that came earlier when he fluffed the easiest of his four chances, in the first-half. The final one, from the right-hand edge of the six-yard box in the 89th minute, might have at least given Werner some satisfaction, crashing off the bar and into the second tier of the Shed End. Like a snooker player succumbing to the primal urge of just smashing the cluster of reds because finesse had done them no favours.

"That's the period Timo is in," said Frank Lampard of his £57million striker's run of nine games without a goal. So followed the Chelsea boss lauding Werner for "getting in the positions" to miss and promising a boom when he finally adds to the four league goals he has so far.

Does reassurance come more flatpack than that served to a struggling forward? Somewhere between "there's plenty more fish in the sea" and "they say that's good luck", similarly countering emotions of feeling all alone and being dumped on from a great height. The memes are plentiful and the Bundesliga revisionism in full swing. But beneath the surface of Lampard’s cliches are relevant and personal messages for Werner to take on board.

He is clearly low on confidence. That was evident when he couldn't control the ball out of his feet and stubbed a shot at Lukasz Fabianski when one-on-one, just as it was when he found himself running blindly into congested areas of the pitch. Both were examples of a player fretting but also of one not changing his behaviours and still trying to make a difference.

As well as continually looking to be a factor in the box, he did not stop moving outside it. Not an outlandish expectation of a 24-year-old armed with a sprinter's dash, but it was more than just putting his head down and charging towards the opposition's goal, though he did plenty of that on Monday night, which made up a chunk of the 17 times he was dispossessed. 

Werner was a "drifter" at RB Leipzig. His free role as part of Julian Nagelsmann's well-drilled side allowed him to find areas that suit him and the team best. The challenge of a new style of football and a more rigid system means those preferred pockets are a lot harder to find. But he is looking for them.

Beyond a primary position left of centre, he's been particularly adept at jolting back to the halfway line during attacks. On Monday night, this created space for Mason Mount and Chelsea's left-back (Ben Chilwell for 10 minutes and Emerson for the rest after Chilwell turned his ankle). Werner would even whistle to notify his teammates of such a move, prompting them to either pass into his feet or exploit the space he had just vacated.

Even talk of the floodgates opening has some merit beyond wishful thinking. For all Werner's goalscoring feats in Germany - 95 goals in 159 games for Leipzig; the fourth most prolific across Europe's top five leagues in 2019/20 with 29 Bundesliga goals behind Ciro Immobile, Robert Lewandowski and Cristiano Ronaldo - those most familiar with his career recognise a streaky operator who happened upon a prolonged streak.

That might seem reductive, perhaps even unfair on Werner who has an impressive record at a young age. But at a time when he's not finding the net, that erraticness is a little clearer. He's not the kind of finisher who has a set routine to convert, more "see ball, hit ball". That's not to say he's a bad one: part of finishing is getting yourself in a position to finish, which he's clearly good at. But it is the most important part. A bit like how some of the world's best golfers are average putters.

Depending on how you take your football, these are either theorems, theories or just straight trash. One thing for certain is that though he was off-colour against West Ham, he still had a positive impact on the match, beyond an unintentional assist.

"I'm not worried," said Lampard on Werner's cold run. "Every striker will want to be scoring goals, it's what they ultimately get judged on and that's why Timo was a great acquisition for us because of the level of goals he's scored in the last few years.

"He's a player in a new league and we have to give him time to settle but he's getting positions regularly, he's scaring teams and giving them a problem."

Lampard's actions back up his words. N'Golo Kante (1,253) is the only Chelsea player who has played more than Werner’s 1,207 Premier League minutes, and that’s not through feeling obliged to play a big-money signing. He offers a unique edge in a Rolodex of high-profile attacking talent. 

Rest at some point over the congested Christmas and New Year period feels inevitable and it may benefit Werner to take a break from the scrutiny, especially as it can be sold as justified rotation and at a time when he is used to putting his feet up with Germany’s winter breaks. He has already stated the relentlessness of the schedule has been particularly taxing, and we can assume getting used to a new country stumbling through the Covid-19 with uncertainty has not made adapting any easier. 

Then again, it's hard to end a drought when you're not playing. And as football powers blusters through the pandemic, no doubt Werner will too. 

Now in fifth, with Arsenal on Boxing Day and the chance to finish the festive period closer to the top than mid-table, Chelsea need Werner hitting his new streak as soon as possible.