Statistical Analysis: Have Chelsea actually improved under Jose Mourinho?

Twelve games have now passed and Chelsea sit third in the league, four points off first placed Arsenal. Chelsea have had an up and down start to life under Jose Mourinho 2.0, with the club at times looking like genuine title contenders, but at others looking like they might struggle for a top fourth berth. With them beating West Ham away, they have continued a record of having not failed to win in three league games under Jose Mourinho. Have we then witnessed an improvement from last season’s third placed finish?
Statistical comparison

	Points per game	Goals per game	Goals conceded per game	Chances created per game	Shots per game	Shot accuracy
Chelsea 12/13	1.97	1.97	1.03	11.58	17.3	49%
Chelsea 13/14	2	1.75	0.83	12.33	16.5	46%

What we can see from a statistical comparison of this season and last season is that Chelsea have slightly improved, by 0.03 points per game extra. This is in itself a very marginal difference in performance from Chelsea and arguably Jose Mourinho should be getting better results from Chelsea, even if they do sit in third position.
Chelsea have been considerably better defensively though, conceding 0.83 goals per game, compared to 1.03 per game last season. Chelsea on the whole do look better at the back, albeit without being perfect. There are still issues that need sorting out, one of which is what is Chelsea’s back centre-back pairing, which thus far remains unclear.
Goal scoring has been the major issue for Chelsea though, who whilst dominating the ball in some games have struggled to convert chances. We can see above that they’re having less shots per game this season (slightly) but are also less accurate in their efforts.This is an interesting statistic as Chelsea have generally not looked clinical in many of their games. One good example was the 1-0 defeat away at Everton where Chelsea created a whole host of chances, at times clear cut chances, but their forwards failed to convert. Chelsea are scoring less goals this season, despite creating more chances.
One issue has been the form of their strikers, but this was problematic last season as well with Fernando Torres for example scoring just once in the league after Christmas. The marginalization of Juan Mata has also had an impact as the Spaniard contributed 12 league goals last season, but has been used sparingly by Jose Mourinho.
Conclusion
We’ve seen a very slight improvement in Chelsea’s form under Jose Mourinho, but in truth the fans might have expected more of an improvement in the context of the return of the ‘special one’. Chelsea’s 1-0 defeat at Basel last night was a case in point of how stop-start their season has been so far this season, with the club not really getting any momentum going at any important times. Going into a very busy Christmas period the club will need to start getting some consistency or they could risk falling out of the Premier League title race, as well as looking less impressive on all fronts. Nine games in December will tell us a lot about how much Chelsea have come on under Jose Mourinho.
  culled from thinkfootball