What Pep Chavarria would bring to Chelsea: Tenacious energy from an extremely ‘busy’ left-back

Pep Chavarria is set to be Chelsea’s most interesting signing of the summer.

Not a typical BlueCo bet on youthful potential or a high-character veteran in his mid-thirties, Chavarria is the type of acquisition not seen at Chelsea since the summer of 2022: a player in the middle of his prime who has been profiled for his ability to do a specific job on the pitch.

A little more than a month after selling Marc Cucurella to Real Madrid for €60million (£51.7m; $69.4m), Chelsea are on track to essentially replace one diminutive 28-year-old Catalan left-back with another. Chavarria is considerably cheaper in transfer fee and salary, but has never been capped by Spain and only started playing in La Liga four years ago.

He has, however, built his career impressively to this point since breaking through for Catalan semi-professional club UE Figueres in the lower reaches of Spanish football as a teenager, and he was an important contributor to a Rayo Vallecano side who finished eighth in La Liga last season while also reaching the final of the UEFA Conference League, losing 1-0 to Crystal Palace.

Chavarria’s role in that Rayo side may offer some clues as to how new Chelsea manager Xabi Alonso will look to use him.

Typically the starting left-back in a 4-2-3-1 that would often become a three-man defence in possession, he was given plenty of freedom to scamper up their left flank with the ball: only two full-backs completed more carries of 10 metres or more last season across Europe’s top five domestic leagues, and 24.9 per cent of those carries were progressive.

The graphic below shows where Chavarria liked to carry the ball last season: always on the left flank and frequently through the middle horizontal third of the pitch into crossing positions.

Once there, he is very capable of picking out team-mates with inviting whipped deliveries, as he did to set up Alemao’s late winner against Alaves in October.

Rayo’s coach last season, Inigo Perez, often paired Chavarria on the left flank with Alvaro Garcia, a very direct winger who regularly sought to drive to the byline. This tendency often opened up the opportunity for Chavarria to make the kind of underlapping runs that Chelsea supporters saw Cucurella perform regularly for Enzo Maresca, and he was adept at recognising the space.

Below is a good example which takes the form of a one-two with Pacha Espino. With a better return pass, Chavarria would have had a golden opportunity to create a goal.

Speaking of golden opportunities to create goals, here is Chavarria using his speed to break Hansi Flick’s notoriously high defensive line and dart in behind Barcelona inside the first minute of a La Liga match in March and square the ball perfectly. He deserved an assist.

Chavarria is also well-versed in more traditional overlapping runs into areas where he can cross or cut the ball back. Here he is doing just that in a 1-1 draw with Girona in May.

Chelsea’s left flank may afford Chavarria fewer underlapping opportunities if summer signing Morgan Rogers is the regular starter in that area of the pitch, but the Spaniard was as versatile as he was active as an off-ball runner for Rayo last season. There is every reason to think he could build positive attacking chemistry with a variety of different team-mates on that side.

If there is one word that best describes Chavarria, it is ‘busy’. His engine appears well suited to the relentless intensity of Premier League football: he ranked 10th among full-backs across Europe’s top five leagues last season for sprints completed per 90 minutes (defined as off-ball runs that exceed 25km/h and are sustained for at least 0.7 seconds).

It is no wonder that now Liverpool head coach Andoni Iraola found Chavarria useful during his tenure as Rayo boss and so did Perez, who is very much of the same school of vertical, high-intensity running football. The 28-year-old’s speed and aggression in hunting the ball down make him easy to incorporate into a modern pressing system.

Here he is against Strasbourg in the second leg of a Conference League semi-final tie in May, hounding Diego Moreira into turning the ball over deep inside his own half and yielding an immediate shooting opportunity for team-mate Isi Palazon.

Chavarria’s defensive numbers do not jump off the page, but he is scrappy, and clearly takes pride in not allowing opponents to get the better of him.

Here he is using his body position and acceleration to defend in isolation against Girona winger Viktor Tsygankov, tracking him to the byline, forcing the Ukrainian to abandon all hope of crossing the ball and eventually creating a turnover.

Not unlike Cucurella, Chavarria’s size and relatively skinny frame will make him an obvious target for Premier League opponents armed with larger, more physically and athletically gifted attackers, but he is capable of mounting at least some resistance, and if there is a particularly unfavourable match-up, Alonso could turn to the bigger, stronger Jorrel Hato instead.

Chelsea may miss Cucurella’s uncanny knack of arriving at the back post to score important goals, as he did on several occasions for Maresca.

Chavarria has not demonstrated the same instincts in the final third, though his most memorable contribution for Rayo last season was a long-range screamer against Atletico Madrid in September which had an xG value of 0.01.

It was his only goal of 2025-26 and, as the shot map below illustrates, he had several other unsuccessful attempts from similar positions:

These pot-shots are unlikely to move the needle for Chelsea in either direction.

What could matter more is that Chavarria has demonstrated he is a good striker of the ball from outside the penalty area, which should prompt a reaction from opponents when he receives the ball in such positions and potentially open up spaces for team-mates.

It is far from clear whether or not Chavarria will be a regular starter for Chelsea, as Cucurella was, should this move go through. But even if he is not, his arrival would indicate a willingness from BlueCo to move away from making endless multi-million-pound bets on potential and target a good, seasoned player at a reasonable price who fits what their manager wants to do.