How Joao Pedro became the Premier League's best striker as Chelsea curse lifted
We have almost reached the one-year anniversary of an Enzo Maresca quote that is increasingly likely to age like fresh cream - and it has nothing to do with recent developments at the club who now employ him. The former Chelsea head coach is fortunate at Manchester City to be able to call on the Premier League's best striker, Erling Haaland, but it is Joao Pedro who is the division's finest No9 on current form.
Haaland has six goals in as many top-flight games this season, yet five-goal Joao Pedro's involvement in build-up play is far greater, and his tally of three league assists to Haaland's zero demonstrates how he is the most productive striker in the world's toughest league. He scored eight goals in seven games during pre-season and has backed that up when it matters, tallying more goal involvements than any Premier League player so far this term.
It was inevitable that 36-year-old Jordan Henderson - on the day he scored his first Premier League brace since 2014 - would receive the bulk of the plaudits after Saturday's5-1 win over Bournemouth, yet that saw a clinical double of his own by Joao Pedro slip slightly under the radar. The Brazilian has taken to life at Chelsea like a duck to water since his £60million move from Brighton last summer, and it was a fair measure of his elite mentality and hunger to strive for even more that he looked gutted to come off when substituted after 72 minutes.
Some data companies' models rate Joao Pedro as the best player in the league this season. He has scored with five of his 13 shots on target - the best conversion rate of any player with at least five attempts.
It appears so certain the 25-year-old will continue to net regularly that it feels no risk to declare Chelsea's decades-old curse of the No9 shirt officially over. Despite Maresca's comments, Joao Pedro scored 20 goals and assisted a further eight across all competitions in his debut campaign for Chelsea.
He has already shown signs of refining and improving his game this season, since taking the No9 shirt off Liam Delap following the end of the Englishman's failed experiment at Stamford Bridge. The shirt's current incumbent continues to enjoy a rather more fruitful time in west London and has even had a custom '9' necklace made, the number enveloped by two miniature arms that replicate his goal celebration.
Joao Pedro's first goal against Bournemouth was a strike that is fast becoming his trademark first-time finish, an unerring right-footed effort arrowed high into the roof of the net from a cross that most forwards would need a first touch to control. It feels no risk to declare Chelsea's decades-old curse of the No9 shirt officially over It was as confident and cold-blooded a strike as Haaland's opener on the turn in City's win at Anfield, and that is the company Joao Pedro keeps these days; his level is becoming a benchmark for the rest of the division's strikers to aim for.
It was no coincidence that his comeback against Bournemouth also brought the return of Chelsea's high-scoring attack after it had faltered without him. Chelsea scored five goals from just 1.08 xG - incredibly clinical finishing led from the front by a man averaging more than a goal a game in the league this term, more than any other player who has struck more than three times.
With a contract that maps out his Chelsea future to 2034, time is on Joao Pedro's side.