It is difficult to find an appropriate word that describes Chelsea’s season but maybe one sentence can: Frank Lampard has been appointed as the interim manager of Chelsea until the end of the season. That sums up the story, doesn’t it?

The London club have had some jaw-dropping transfer windows, both during summer and winter windows, this year. With a number of players coming in, it is almost impossible to keep track of who is playing when and which players are playing regularly. The below visualisation shows the percentage of overall league minutes that each player has played so far.

Chelsea have struggled for goals this season. This is mostly due to a lack of a proper centre-forward. However, one player who has constantly played in that position is Kai Havertz. That explains why he has played the most minutes for Chelsea. Behind Havertz, comes Kepa Arrizabalaga who has seen his Chelsea career revived in 2022/23. Kepa has played in 73% of the league minutes this term.

Thiago Silva, the 38-year-old centre-back, has played the third-most minutes in the league this term for Chelsea, with Silva playing 65% of the league minutes. This is in spite of Chelsea signing Kalidou Koulibaly and Benoît Badiashile, both of whom have played 64% and 26% of the league minutes respectively. It is important to note that Badiashile was only signed in January.

Chelsea have had a number of injury problems on the left side and right side of central defence where the minutes have been split between Marc Cucurella and Ben Chilwell on the left side, while it’s been split between Trevor Chalobah, Reece James and Azpilicueta on the right.

January signing Enzo Fernández has already featured in 34% of the league minutes, while summer signing Raheem Sterling has only played 52% of the minutes so far. Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang has struggled to impress whenever he has had the chance and has hence played in only 17% of the minutes so far. The biggest surprises in terms of league minutes played include Hakim Ziyech, who has played fewer minutes than he would have desired.

In what has been one of the weirdest seasons for Chelsea this year, they will be looking to improve and make necessary steps towards the top of the table by, first of all, cutting down their squad size and then, ensuring they have the right profiles of players at their disposal.