Benoît Badiashile to Chelsea: A Multi-faceted Data Analysis

Chelsea have completed the signing of Benoît Badiashile from Monaco on a contract through June 2030, with the London club paying a total fee of €38 million for the 21-year-old French youth international. Badiashile is the latest center back to join Chelsea over the past year after Wesley Fofana and Kalidou Koulibaly's arrivals last summer, and he is the Blues' third January signing after Andrey Santos and David Datro Fofana.

His overall game is pertinently facilitated by his imposing and powerful 6’4’’ frame whilst also not infringing or inhibiting upon his athleticism. To many, Badiashile is a relatively unknown prospect and therefore I want to take a look at his current dataset and compare it to three wider scopes; Ligue 1 CBs, CBs in Europe’s Top 5 Leagues and his prospective Chelsea companions.

Chelsea’s recruitment under the Todd Boehly regime has been scattergun to say the least but for the purposes of this statistical analysis, I am going to presume that Chelsea’s remit was a multi-faceted, capable ball-playing and defensively sound centre-half for the ultimate acquisition and therefore my chosen statistics (and coinciding weightage) are as follows:

Successful Defensive Actions per 90 - 12.5% weightage Defensive duels won, (%) - 32.5% weightage Aerial Duels won, (%) -25% weightage Possession Adjusted Interceptions - 10% weightage Successful Dribbles (%) - 5% weightage Accurate Passes (%) - 10% weightage Accurate Long Passes (%) - 5% weightage.