CHELSEA ANALYSIS 📈🔵

FireSide

Tactical Report-The Mistakes

The honeymoon is over. At the start of Potter era, we said these moments will come. What matters now is how we sail together in this. But the most important is how we correct our mistakes rather than blaming each other

In previous three articles of fireside, I said potter needs to stop the baby gambling with how we start matches and how we line up. Any tactical guy would tell you it was just a matter of time before a more ruthless opponent punishes us. And so it happened with brighton.

It is fair to criticize whoever analyses our opponents however. Our opponents analyst is fair to say has been below par. It is either he is mediocre at best or the coaching unit is. How we set up against teams has been disaster and has always raised questions how we would even when you expect complete opposite. Or the coach just trust some low rate players to execute complex tactical strategies above their abilities. Its fair to say we have been playing airy fairy through first halves of matches and heavily relied on substistutions. Some as early as the first half.

Against opponents with good control and Ruthlessness, such a tremendous collapse was expected.

Against brighton for instance, with how they play, it was so wrong to line up in a 3-4-3. It should have been a 3-5-2 or a back 4.
This collapse was only compounded by having sterling and Pulisic as wingbacks without defensive foundations behind them. Considering how Brighton attack and press it was bound to leave plenty of spaces behind. There was also need to have solidity in midfield by playing midfield three to help with triangles and overloads to beat the tenacious brighton press and transition balls faster to attack.

Rlc offers Close dribbling through ball retention to beat press. Defesively he is a liability and upfront he offers almost nothing. Without also forgetting his speed in thoughts to switch transition from midfield to attack Having him as a pair against a team that presses him from go simply leaves the other midfield pair exposed.
Against a team that plays slowly.. he trys to flourish.

Upfront, it is similar issue with Kai. Just force press him into mistakes and he losses possession and attack collapses.

Having Sterling and Pulisic in was to give us more attacking width which was a very good idea. But we failed to also factor in Brightons pressing abilities and speed in transition through wide areas. We needed just a good midfield three to bring out the best in sterling and Pulisic in the wings and have two strikers to allow direct football to bypass the press at times and launch vertical attacks. These could also have helped with ball retention in attacking areas through sensible hold up play.

Instead the brighton midfield had a field day through our weak midfield and spaces left in wide areas.

Too much tinkering is ofcourse also having an effect on cohesion and intergration. Potter is plainly suffering from the pep malaise of overthinking situations. An eye to the next match is giving us blind eye in the present matches. We just think too far ahead and hope the inconsistent guys will bail us out. With the crazy fixture list coming up next its just scary how things could end up if the gambling keeps on rolling.

🔹️@ChelseaAnalysis

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8.77K viewsJJ Kinyua, edited 18:26