3 Tactical things learnt from Chelsea’s loss against Spurs in Preseason

Xabi Alonso’s off ball principles were apparent but Chelsea’s midfield on the ball struggled on the ball

Xabi lined Chelsea up with a lot of the starters today. Colwill-Fofana backline, Lavia-Essugo midfield (Based on who’s available), Hato-Palestra fullbacks and an Estevao-Palmer, Gittens, Joao Pedro front/attacking midfield line. Lots of interesting details to touch but lets focus on the most important and pertinent.

Press works if the players can keep it up for more minutes

We established after WSW that Xabi wants to press in a 4-4-2 shape. Now we really got to see how it looked like from the start with our starting players and attackers too because they will lead the press. Joao and Palmer led the press from the front in a 4-4-2 shape.

Spurs built up, De Zerbi style in a 4-2 shape, the fullbacks become inverted/midfielder’s during the build up but in this case, Robertson was more or less going wide and Archie Gray at RB was inverting for Spurs into the midfield and attacking right half spaces.

Chelsea’s midfield pivot (Lavia and Essugo) pushed really high onto Spurs’s pivot (Bergvall and Tonali).

Estevao tracking his man Robertson and Gittens on Archie Gray, they are out of this picture above.

Notice Estevao is firstly blocking the spaces and passes to the half spaces where Gallager could receive the ball, first before trying to read the pass to Robertson.

It made him late to press Robertson on some occasions, but that is the first of all zonal element to Chelsea’s press too. Estevao and Gittens were given that dual role of blocking the spaces to Gallagher/Bergvall on Gittens side and then pressing Robertson /Gray whenever it was apparent the ball is getting to them. That is if the ball is on the other side though. See in Gittens case.

The Chelsea CB’s then push up onto Spurs’s 10 and ST, as you can see in the image below, Colwill pushed up on Solanke when Solanke dropped deep to receive and Fofana followed Gallagher when he dropped deep. The Fullbacks, Palestra and Hato are keeping aware of their men.

Lets run a scenario for that. Palmer and JP here in position to press the Spurs CBs,

Palmer senses the back pass from Tonali as a pressing trigger and goes for it. Essugo is late on Tonali here but makes up the ground. Gittens on Gray and Lavia on Bergavlli. Notice Estevao’s positioning, he’s not concerned about Robertson yet because the ball cannot magically go from that side to Robertson that’s free so, he’s focused again on the inside spaces where Gallagher is. That helps to keep presses compact and suffocating, giving Chelsea the extra man.

Esssugo ends up making the ground and wins the ball from Tonali

There are many more examples of Chelsea winning the ball high from pressing situations.

Issue is the press couldn’t last until the end of the half. Late in the half it dwindled,

Chelsea’s Zonal 4-4-2 OOP will help Chelsea keep lots of leads next season

Chelsea’s OOP under Maresca who was our last real long lasting manager till he left, applied a deep highline and Man to Man pressing OOP system in our mid-low block. Which meant, even when the team was defending in their half, they were basically marking man to man which left gaps because if you follow your man to an odd place, the team could get opened up, at times we saw our midfield open up because of that. Also teams have exploited the deep highline at times.

Xabi’s approach is different. His approach focuses on blocking space. Defending the space and keeping a compact shape is important to him.

It is important because, you don’t want your deep block to be losing its shape because you want to keep man to man references aggressively that deep, I would prefer that to be higher up the pitch and it told on the players’s legs too.

The wingers, Gittens and Estevao, make sure to follow the runs of the Spurs Fullbacks.

Its not like Chelsea didn’t keep M2M references but they focused on tracking them and passing them on to other markers if the zone will leave the shape open. But lots of tracking of runs and such. It was compact. If the CBs stepped out to mark, they were covered by the CDMs. Like here Essugo filling in for Fofana pressing out.

Now here comes the key, can we transition from a mid-block to a full on press?

Yes.

Palmer and Joao Pedro press and Chelsea transition from a 4-4-2 zonal midblock to a high press.

The same thing suffered as well late in the half as well as the press. So Chelsea couldn’t transition to a high press easily because Palmer and Joao Pedro couldn’t keep it up. Its still early in preseason so its understandable. But they have to keep the intensity up during the season. 1 game per week too.

Lastly

Chelsea’s midfield couldn’t control proceedings.

Now first of all we need to give this context. This is not Chelsea’s first choice midfield, Caicedo and Enzo are not available yet. But Lavia is Chelsea’s 3rd choice right now and can play at a high level when fit. He isn’t yet but he did show flashes of his quality at the same time on the ball. Essugo, though good off the ball, didn’t look comfortable under pressure, lost the ball at times when he was on it and didn’t help us to recycle possession as we ought to. The midfield is a big part of Xabi’s plans. They help to control games with the way they circulate the ball. It’s probably an aspect of preseason that we haven’t yet seen to full effect. Watson did well vs WSW in that aspect though. They will also press really high, and cover the half-spaces behind each Fullback, so they need to be high IQ players in possession and have legs off it. Caicedo has that. It will be interesting to see how we play with Enzo. Enzo does have legs, he was clocked as one of the fastest players in the World Cup interestingly, but positional discipline, being in the pivot is something he will have to maybe re-learn under Xabi? Because at this very moment he looks like he will play in the pivot if he stays.

In this game, Sharman-Lowe looked to bypass the Chelsea midfield all together in build up to go straight long to the forwards which is also a tactic to bypass M2M presses. He did that a lot of the time, time he used Lavia direct, even though it was fortuitous the way the ball landed in his path, Lavia also used a skill to beat a man, in Lavia style cause he was pressed by 2 players and we went on to score.

Risk v Reward but it is something we could do more of with players that can handle it, Caicedo and Enzo can, Lavia can, Essugo can’t at this level yet. Shows we need a new midfielder, especially with Lavia’s fragile hamstrings.

Leant a lot from that game and im sure Xabi would. Wouldn’t draw conclusions yet from it as lots of players that could and will start are yet to play but can gain progressive understanding of the squad.