Oluwaseun 🇳🇬
@MobyChe
Chelsea v Brentford Chelsea's ability to Counter Press and sustain pressure was the big difference against Brentford Importance of Sanchez to stifle Brentford's plans Tactical Review Thread
Chelsea lined up in a 4-2-3-1 with Noni coming in for the suspended Neto and Gusto coming back into the side, Tosin coming in for Badiashille as well. Brentford line up in a 5-3-2 as expected with Wissa and Mbeumo up top https://x.com/MobyChe/status/1...
Brentford's plan was to set up their 5-3-2 mid-lowblock against Chelsea with simply the aim of stopping them from scoring. I mean, seeing how teams have been torn apart when they are open against us, who wouldn't?
That's why as i also predicted, as Maresca tends to do against a back 5 or a low block, play his diamond midfield formation. Yesterday, Cole was the tip of the diamond, behind Jackson, Enzo was on the right, Cucurella inverted from LB into the LHS and Caicedo was at the base. https://x.com/MobyChe/status/1...
Again for clarity, whats the aim guys? Overloads. have more numbers than Brentford's players where you want it and we will come back to how it paid off in a second. Can you see the last line, 6 Chelsea players attacking the last line, But credit to Brentford, they tried to match us every single time, because you can see, they had to match us 6v6
This can be risky against Brentford because when Brentford counter you and gets the ball to Mbeumo and Wissa then you have issues but when Brentford are this deep, it also plays in your favour because it means they have fewer numbers in forward areas, everyone is defending, the only Brentford player not in this shot is Wissa and he had to come back to defend a few seconds later
So, if Chelsea were to face a low block, what was the plan to break them down? Cross, Cross, Cross, Cross again and then again, and then some more and a little more. Chelsea finished the game with 34 crosses, in pale comparison to Brentford's which was 18, I remember saying before the game, Limit Brentford's crossing numbers and you limit balls to Wissa and Mbuemo, which we did. Chelsea averaged 15 crosses per game before this game https://x.com/MobyChe/status/1...
Maresca is big on where these crosses are coming from and doesn't just cross from nowhere for crossing sake, we tend to take loads of our crosses from these 2 locations, the Half space and from deep on the wing, then just to be thorough, cutbacks. Let's examine them Half space crosses Colwill and Gusto were the outside CBs in possession, positioned to receive the ball directly from the wingers because of how high Enzo and Cucurella were to pin Brentford's low block down. so they had the chance to put in the ball from these locations Notice their positioning.
Now let's see it in action. Notice another thing here? the number of Chelsea players attacking the box. because we had 6 attacking the box, we had men free, enough men to threaten Brentford if a cross came in right https://x.com/Mobchevid/status...
Seam Runs Enzo and Cucu's positions meant they were meant to be running into the space off the wingers and get into positions to cross, Seam Runs. https://x.com/Mobchevid/status...
populated Chelsea scored from this and it is something Noni has been showing for weeks, beautiful cross and Chelsea once again populated the box well and Cucurella ended up scoring a beautiful header https://x.com/Mobchevid/status...
Just Cole being Cole Sometimes we also just created centrally, Palmer finding a pocket of space, attracting players unto him and freeing someone else. Sancho here also puts in a cutback as well https://x.com/Mobchevid/status...
Now we've highlighted the way Chelsea created chances against Brentford, now how did we sustain pressure and make them break, COUNTER PRESSING, one of the key things for Chelsea in this game is how well they were going to put Brentford under pressure because, do it long enough and they fold, I mentioned this pre-match https://x.com/MobyChe/status/1...
So like I said, Brentford defending so deep in numbers meant there wasn't enough to counter easily, but Chelsea players were extremely aggressive through out the game, being first to throughout balls, Caicedo was outstanding in this regard. winning 2 tackles(which looked like more tbh) and making 4 interceptions. Enzo won 3, Gusto and Cucurell won 2 each and more, everyone pulled their weight
Our CBs were closely marking Wissa and Mbuemo whenever they dropped deep. Colwill had an outstanding performance and gave Mbeumo a hard time all game, overpowered him in different instances, we aggressively won the ball and sustained pressure https://x.com/Mobchevid/status...
Another thing that helped us to sustain pressure was the way we also retained possession, our wingers were key to this, Sancho, Sancho lost the ball only 14 times, and Noni had the least with only losing the ball 10 times. https://x.com/Mobchevid/status...
Now Let's talk about Brentford, they tried to press us when we had the ball from GKs or recycle the ball to Sanchez. They went man to man hard and aggressively. Brentford CBs stepping up to mark Chelsea's men as far as in midfield. it was aggressive as they saw a mistake in us, they particularly pressed Sanchez hard(no surprise) but Sanchez handled it well and just booted it away with the aim of trying to find a longer ball to Jackson more quickly when that happened
Jackson actually did well to win those longer balls, winning half of his duels, 4/8 when those happened to help us get up the pitch, as we didnt force playing out of the back every time
Also, when BRE got out of the Counter press and tried to release Mbuemo and Wissa early, Sanchez's aggressive positioning and ability to sweep balls were so key. He stopped BRE from getting chances from Counters https://x.com/Mobchevid/status...
Aside from those, Brentford varied their attack with short and long build-ups but because of Chelsea's press, they went along a lot in the 1st half of which Chelsea had to continuously fight with BRE for 2nd balls and we did well enough winning almost 50-50 of the duels against one of the leagues most physical teams even without Lavia, even winning more aerial duels. Tosin was massively key to this, winning a staggering 7/7 of his Aerial duels
Chelsea's press did the rest for shorter build-ups, a M2M pressing structure allowed us to pin BRE in their half and win the ball, I remember saying they have a lot of mistakes in them trying to build up short https://x.com/Mobchevid/status...
BRE love to get crosses into their dangerous forward men but Chelsea limited them, but when they did, Sanchez made 6 high claims, his ability to claim crosses limited their setpiece threat too. https://x.com/Mobchevid/status...
An important thing Sanchez did after stopping such is counter BRE really fast because they didn't want BRE to settle in their low block so they quickly attacked, we saw more of it in the 2nd half when BRE tried to get a goal https://x.com/Mobchevid/status...
Chelsea's willingness to attack quickly was the same after winning the ball, when we pressed harder in the 2nd half and counter-pressed, won the ball, we looked to attack quickly and got big chances from it and scored from Jackson https://x.com/Mobchevid/status...
Chelsea were dominant for just over 70mins then BRE tried to put Chelsea under pressure more, Chelsea players felt it and put in dangerous crosses into the box, that period they put in more crosses than at any point in the game https://x.com/Mobchevid/status...
Brentford had also been trying to threaten Chelsea from behind. Sanchez had been stopping them prior to then but They finally got it right for the goal. The defending from Chelsea to mark 2 men was poor. https://x.com/Mobchevid/status...
Chelsea then had that spell in the last period of the 2nd half where they began to lose balls continuously under pressure from Brentford but scored the 2nd and held on despite Brentford scoring back to make it 2-1. Chelsea held on for a very impressive victory, most of it was controlled and they faced some adversity and held on for the win. Maresca's blues are learning how to handle different situations and learning from it
End of Thread Likes, Reposts and Comments are fully appreciated as always Thank you What impressed you most about the Performance?