First, 20 shots at Everton. Next, 32 shots at BK Hacken. Of the 52 shots in total across 180 minutes of football in four days, one finds the back of the net.
And if you square the eight and move the two and subtract the total of the square root of Ellie Carpenter’s 20 crosses into the box, you’ll find that the answer to the question that you’re really asking — which is why things aren’t straightforward for Chelsea when Lauren James isn’t on the pitch — is actually quite simple. It’s because Lauren James isn’t on the pitch.
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That was the diagnosis from many after Chelsea’s consecutive stalemates, both of which James was absent from due to a hamstring injury sustained during a 6-0 win over Charlton Athletic at the start of the month that, according to the club, will see her out for multiple weeks.
It’s not a terribly misinformed diagnosis. In terms of the 25-year-old England forward’s skill set, there are few in the world like her. It lends a hand in explaining why it can look and feel so difficult for Chelsea without her.
It’s worth noting that despite last season’s notable underperformance in front of goal, Chelsea are scoring goals this season. They sit top of the WSL rankings for goals scored (28), shots (215) and the number of goalscorers (13).
Even so, they’re still underperforming their xG (29.8) by -1.8, ranking second-from-bottom in the league for overall xG performance. As Chelsea host league leaders and reigning league champions Manchester City (two points ahead of Chelsea) on Saturday, a key narrative will be the absence of Chelsea’s biggest threat.
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As one rival analyst for a WSL club, speaking anonymously to protect relationships, put it, there is a sense of two Chelseas: Chelsea with James, and Chelsea without James. How congruously the statistics stack up to that claim is fascinating.
Since James’ move to Chelsea from Manchester United ahead of the 2021-22 season, she has played 68 WSL matches (Opta does not provide data for FA Cup, League Cup or the Women’s Champions League). Within those, Chelsea have recorded 54 wins, seven draws and seven losses, while averaging 18.6 shots with 37 per cent accuracy, 2.2xG, and 2.6 goals scored per game.
In the 51 matches James has missed (mostly due to injury), Chelsea have recorded 42 wins, six draws and three losses, while averaging 19.5 shots with 36 per cent accuracy, 2.5xG and 2.9 goals scored per game.
Meanwhile, Chelsea’s conversion rate with James rests at 14 per cent, and 15 per cent without her (albeit in 17 fewer matches).
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Numbers cannot quantify the feel of a match, nor does the above account for the share of creative and goalscoring responsibilities spread across different squads and changes of managers, or the number of matches James has been forced to miss due to injury.
It’s worth considering James’ overall numbers on a per-90 basis in the past four seasons and their context.
Since the 2023-24 season, James has managed more than 900 minutes of league football in two seasons: 2023-24 and 2025-26. Her 2023-24 season (the last of Chelsea’s Emma Hayes era) was her best in a Chelsea shirt, managing 13 goals and two assists across 16 WSL appearances (16 goals and three assists across 29 appearances in all competitions).
Since then, James has been switched more gradually to the left (see the graphic below) while also taking on more creative responsibilities, dropping deeper to help build play.
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Even so, other than the 2024-25 season (Sonia Bompastor’s first season as Chelsea head coach, in which James managed just 562 minutes across nine WSL appearances), James has also overperformed her xG in every season since 2023-24, which speaks to the unrivalled quality of her finishing. And over the past two seasons, it’s this sharpness which Chelsea have so drastically missed during her absences.
Since the start of last season, Chelsea have scored 24 goals from 31.4xG (a -7.4 underperformance) in the 12 games she has missed.
In the 19 matches James has featured in, they have scored 48 goals from 44.1xG (a +3.9 overperformance). Her five goals and four assists from 14 league games and 11 starts last season represented the second-highest volume of goal involvements in Bompastor’s squad behind Alyssa Thompson (10), and were only bettered by 13 players in the league. James also ranked 14th in the WSL for key passes, despite her lengthy absence.
In her five WSL appearances this season, James has scored four goals (joint-second most for Chelsea) from an xG of just 2.2 (the sixth-best in the team).
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Meanwhile, in the 2022-23 and 2023-24 seasons, Chelsea scored 90 times from 70.0xG in 34 games with James (a +20.0 overperformance) and 47 from 34.3xG (+12.8 overperformance) in 10 games without her. The latter is inflated a bit by two 8-0 wins and two 6-0 wins, but even when removing those, Chelsea scored 19 goals from 15.5xG in six matches (a +3.5 overperformance).
While James has missed more football in the time since the 2022-23 and 2023-24 seasons, what has also changed is how much responsibility James bears for Chelsea’s creative and goalscoring output.
In the 2022-23 season, Sam Kerr, Guro Reiten, Pernille Harder and Fran Kirby all scored more than James’ five goals.
In the 2023-24 season, in which James played the second-highest number of minutes in her Chelsea career behind the 2022-23 season, James ranked highest in the team for goals scored with 13. Still, Aggie Beever-Jones’ 11 goals, along with eight from Sjoeke Nusken and seven from Reiten, helped to supplement that tally. In fact, that Chelsea squad boasted 19 goalscorers in total, with nine players managing more than two goals.
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Last season, no Chelsea player managed more than seven goals, a culmination of underperformance as well as an injury-ravaged strike force. It was James’ late return to the pitch that helped Chelsea to not only claim the League Cup but also secure Champions League football.
Despite Chelsea being held to a 1-1 draw against Aston Villa on the WSL’s opening weekend, it was James’ goal that opened the scoring and her moments on the ball which gave Chelsea their best chances. Her deployment as a false nine in September’s 5-0 thrashing of Manchester United (in which she registered one goal) saw Chelsea at their ruthless best. In fact, in Chelsea’s opening two matches, James registered 19 shots in total — a league record.
“We know how good Lauren is for us, for the team,” Bompastor said after Chelsea’s recent victory over Charlton. “My job is to make sure I find solutions when LJ isn’t available. I looked at some of the statistics from last week and the good thing is we’re a team who can score with different players.”
Chelsea’s attacking quality even without James shouldn’t be underrated. The recent return to fitness of Japan forward Manaka Matsukubo will be a welcome boon. Bompastor’s evolution of defensive midfielder Keira Walsh into a more creative outlet has also been fruitful. In the WSL, Walsh sits joint-top for goal involvements in Chelsea’s squad with four assists and two goals alongside summer signing Melvine Malard, who has six goals. Walsh’s two goals are only bettered by Ellie Carpenter and James (four each).
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But reliability is needed from the front line and other areas of the pitch so the attacking onus doesn’t fall onto a player who, at her best in a Chelsea shirt, has played 60 per cent of a season. For Bompastor and Chelsea, it could be what the season’s success turns on.
This article originally appeared in The Athletic.
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