FireSide

#PREMATCH

Personally, I think we are more stable with Enzo on a free role in midfield rather than as one of the two lynch pins in the hole. Reece + Caicedo, Reece + Santos, Santos+Caicedo. As well as Lavia, there is also the Acheampong option Maresca talked about.

It could be a matter of who we sacrifice upfront to field both Enzo and Palmer to attain this.

Maresca doing what he did vs Bournemouth at the Vitality last season - asking the FB to move into an AM role as soon as possible to keep Semenyo away from our box. Last game it was Cucu as Semenyo was at RW, this time Gusto asked to do it.

Via CFCCentral3

Palmer is not at it today. Was he rushed back?

Play him in his preferred position (RW) and everything would be fine. It’s common sense

Delap was good with his hold up play and channel running before he got injured, as usual when the fan base don’t like you they don’t like you.

It's not as simple as playing him in a different position and he'll explode.

The stats said otherwise last season. The reality Palmer is just slowly coming back from injury.

Away against Atalanta next.

It'll be intresting to see who is rested with Caicedo available.

He will still be suspended for Everton at home next weekend then available for Cardiff in the Carabao Cup

With the defensive partnership of Trevoh Chalobah and Wesley Fofana we are unbeaten in six.

Five clean sheets ⛔

The only goal conceded was when down to ten men against Arsenal.

Chalobah came on at HT for Tosin against Ajax when we had already conceded.

Our best defensive pairing?

How did this man perform today?

Horrible, turn over machine alongside Neto. immediately those two have the ball in attacking areas prepare to defend because they are more likely to lose the ball than keep it. Those two completed 0 dribbles today. Maresca needs to hold some smoke too. Horrible performance, The truth stinks

Realistically and without being bias when do you think we can win the league? Genuine question to real Chelsea fans

FireSide

#AfterThought

Once, I wrote here and it's coming to pass.

Jackson's biggest enemy was his ability to find spaces through smart positioning and movement that created most of his chances out nothing.

People were looking at the chances he wasted but not how he created them or the fluidity he brought in attack.

Next PL fixture is against Everton who are 5th on the table, just 1 point behind Chelsea and have lost only 1 of their last 6 games.

This season, João Pedro is averaging his worst shots/90 in his senior career, an alarming 1.75 shots/90. The starting CFs of 18 other PL teams are managing more; only Wolves’ Jorgen Strand-Larsen has managed fewer.

Since his goal vs Fulham, Joao Pedro has scored two and assisted one in 18 appearances for club and country. 15 of those appearances have been for Chelsea, in which he has mustered a dismal 13 shots, five of them in one game vs Spurs.

(Via CFCCentral3)

👇Read more here:

Now that we’re slowly finding our footing defensively, the attack decides to switch off😂

Chelsea for you

FireSide

The Key

In highly compact games, the key is fielding players with higher close dribbling metrics in attacking areas. People who can force breakage of lines through ball carrying. People like Neto (I love this guy), Garnacho, Pedro are mostly toothless in such matches and offer almost zero impact.

With Estevao's style of play (dribbling with the ball outside of his body) he'd almost also be useless too. Why? The compactness compounded with double marking would limit his style to having only one side to make movements.

Solution?

I'd put Estevao in 10 to give him spaces on both sides to maneuver by dribbling both left, right, forward and back.

Put Palmer on the right wing (has both close control, central control and outside control).

Gittens would have come on the left but he is currently hard to trust and rely on. So I'd first go with Neto then him or Garnacho. To hell, I can even try Buonanote there to come in in half spaces and let Cucurella provide the outer attack width.

Or have Neto on the wide left, Palmer on the right half space and Reece/Gusto providing the right width

But of course I am just some crazy little man that coaches and manages only in my dreams. Just two cent opinion.

🗣️ Ricardo Carvalho: "Sometimes you have teams that need to play well to get results. In that time at Chelsea, what I feel now when I think about it, is that team sometimes didn’t need to play so well to get results, because it was difficult to play against us."

Adam Wharton impresses me every time i watch him. he’s very very good