There are lies, damn lies and statistics, or at least that’s how the saying goes. Regardless, I’ve had a trawl through the stats from Town’s defeat to Chelsea to see if there’s anything interesting to take away from it.

Here are the stats that stood out to me…

Hazard had six successful dribbles in his brief cameo

Hazard was only on the pitch for a 15 minute cameo appearance towards the end, but in that time he ran rings around a tired and demoralised Town defence. A successful dribble means he took on an opposition player with the ball and came away cleanly.

His six dribbles were more than any other player on the pitch, even though he only popped on for the last few minutes (and he only returned for preseason training last week).

In case you were curious, no Town player managed more than one successful dribble in the match.

Mooy took 70 touches of the ball

Mooy didn’t have his best game but he still touched the ball more than any other Town player. Unsurprisingly, he also passed the ball more than any other player for the home team, with 51 passes and 40 of them finding a blue and white shirt.

This stat shows how much we rely on Mooy to get Town playing and he’s the focal point when we’re building attacks. He’ll have better games than yesterday, but I wonder if we’re putting too much pressure on him to always be the deep-lying playmaker. Maybe his midfield colleagues could pick up the slack, and take some pressure of the Australian international.

Mounié won 11 aerial duels

An aerial duel is the term used by statisticians for headers, and Mounié won 11 of the 16 he went up for. This includes the header against the post that nearly gave us an equaliser. His dominance in the air is clear from this stat, and it’s a shame we couldn’t exploit this more with quality deliveries into the box.

Chelsea had 63% of the possession

This is a stat that will surprise no Town fans, but it’s worth highlighting that Chelsea enjoyed a lot more possession than Town and this allowed them to boss the game, particularly in the second half. It’s possible for teams to get good results without seeing much of the ball, Leicester turned this into an artform in their title-winning season, but Town didn’t make the most of the few opportunities they managed to carve out.

Hadergjonaj was dribbled past five times

No player on the pitch was dribbled past more than Hadergjonaj, who had a tough afternoon in the right wingback position. Willian was a tricky opponent and regularly got the better of Flo when he ran at him. Given that Willian played for Brazil in the World Cup and is a target for Barcelona, there’s no shame in being outclassed by such a player.

I’d expect to see better from Flo in the future, particularly when he’s up against less impressive opposition. However, it wouldn’t surprise me if David Wagner gave Tommy Smith a chance at right wingback against Man City next weekend.