Chelsea manager Jose Mourinho may have been onto something when he described Diego Costa as “not normal” after his hat trick against Swansea last weekend.
Those three goals took his Premier League total this season to seven, four more than anyone else, which works out at 1.81 goals scored for every 90 minutes he’s played. This means that he’s scored at a faster rate than 16 of the 20 Premier League teams so far this season.
Four matches is admittedly a small sample size, although the fact that no one comes close to him in any goalscoring categories highlights how impressive his start to life in the Premier League has been. Only Sergio Aguero comes close to his scoring rate so far with an average of 1.32 goals per 90 minutes, and no other striker is in sight of the goal-per-game mark.
Nor can this start be marked out as an anomaly, as his performances for Atletico Madrid testify. Last season he played 26 full league matches for Atletico and netted 21 times, while adding six more in nine partial appearances. The specifics of these 27 goals give a fascinating insight into the type of single-minded hit-man Chelsea have.
Goalkeepers will certainly note that Costa has an unerring accuracy with his shots, getting 67.4 per cent on target last season, compared to Wayne Rooney’s 42.9 per cent or Daniel Sturridge’s 42.6 per cent. Excluding penalties, he converted an impressive 26.2 per cent of his shots into goals. This far outdid the best from the Premier League, where the likes of Sturridge and Aguero hovered around the 20 per cent mark.
Costa’s shot conversion rate is currently at 50 per cent this season: a quite astonishing number. Unsustainable? Perhaps so, particularly given that the fixture list has been kind to Chelsea so far, though as his own manager testified, “the Beast” is no normal creature.
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