Pedro Rodriguez, formerly Barcelona’s man behind the shadows and one of Guardiola’s favourite players, has always been someone who has delivered the goods with consistency, whatever the situation may be. However, with the arrival of Luis Suarez, Pedro found playing time limited and that had him looking for a move abroad. With a move to Manchester United scrapped thanks to negative feedback from his former teammate Victor Valdes, Pedro moved to Chelsea as Jose Mourinho’s last gamble in the transfer window to amend a slow start.
As the start went from bad to worse and Chelsea went from a parked bus to a crashed one, Pedro has seemingly failed to adapt to the rigors of the Premier League and failed to produce the output he used to do on a weekly basis at Barcelona.
Credit to him, he started out so brightly against West Brom that Chelsea fans could be forgiven in believing he was the answer to Chelsea’s woes. But ever since that game, Pedro has looked like a sorry impersonation of someone bumping into every defender as if it were FIFA’s legacy mode defending.
Were one to take a look at his Squawka scores, a comparison between his current season and his last season at Barcelona, it would be clear how much he is struggling as compared to last season, which in fact wasn’t considered one of his better seasons for Barcelona as well!
He has found it difficult to adapt to the physicality of the league and the stark difference in the space he’s provided by defenders. In Spain, he had acres of space to run into but in the Premier League Pedro has really found it difficult to get going. His struggles are well adapted by his dwindling goal and assist tallies.
With the injury to Eden Hazard, Pedro has found himself more playing time than he’d merit given his earlier performances, but he is yet to capitalise on it. He has been creating chances though, which is a positive given the struggles of the other creative players in the Blues’ ranks. Pedro has also won himself some credit with the fans given his work rate and always looking to turn things around even when they’re not quite going for him.
A positive that Chelsea fans would take from the thrilling draw against Everton was that before being taken off, Pedro was playing pretty well and was making things happen. Will it be a case of a player’s initial struggles to bed in or will it be a case of a player’s plain inability to perform in the Premier League, only time will tell, but what Chelsea fans sure hope that he would end up being at least a Willian and not a Cuadrado!
Stats Courtesy – Squawka
