Tactical Analysis: Chelsea vs Fulham Chelsea suffered their first league defeat this season against a team outside the top six. What contributed to their struggles, and could these issues persist? A Thread!
https://twitter.com/CFCNewsJJ/... One of our main problems stemmed from the press, so it’s only fitting to start there. In the clip, we see Sancho marking Diop, Jackson pressing the goalkeeper with the CCB in his cover shadow, while Enzo positions himself between the left center-back and Lukic. Enzo attempts to press with Lukic in his cover shadow as well. Meanwhile, Palmer is caught in two minds: whether to chase Lukic or cover the CCB, whom Jackson fails to recover in time to mark. Iwobi drops deep, and Gusto isn’t as tight on him as he should be. Pay close attention to Neto’s positioning - he’s essentially playing as a right-back. I wanted to highlight this video first to emphasize how off the pace we were right from the start as well. Going man-to-man was never going to end well.
From the video you can see the idea. Our front three pressed their back three, with Enzo playing as the left winger because Neto was tasked with marking Robi. Palmer tracked Lukic, Caicedo stayed on Andreas, Gusto marked Iwobi, Neto dealt with Robi, the two CBs handled Jimenez, and Cucurella was assigned to Traore. Since we opted to defend with two CBs, their right-back became the free man. When they built up play on the right side, it often took Cucurella too long to apply pressure effectively.
We consistently struggled to cope with Fulham's rotations, which I largely attribute to player fatigue, and their rotations was difficult to track. Jackson and Palmer were often half a yard short of applying optimal pressure. Similarly, Gusto, Caicedo, and Neto failed to close down their markers effectively during the buildup, allowing Fulham's players to receive the ball, turn, and distribute with ease.
Maresca realized Neto was playing too deep trying to mark Robi which messed up our attacking sequences , so he switched Neto on Iwobi and left Gusto on Robi. This did not change much as Neto was still defending higher up the pitch, so he decided to switch Neto and Enzo(3rd image). However the changes didnt work. Gusto was struggling with Robi, so Neto was instructed to play RB again. On that last image, notice the timing in which we close down FULs players and the spacing in between them. We allowed FUL too much time/space for a team that wanted to press high. This was a major reason they consistently managed to play through us. It got to a point I saw Neto just stay deep when Robi dropped, allowing Robi to easily help aid FUL to play through us. The players were tired.
Because of our pressing approach, we frequently found Palmer dropping into the pivot, with Enzo occasionally shifting to the right wing. Our intent to keep two CBs on their striker meant they always had a free man. As shown in the image, their right-back often found himself unmarked, a situation they exploited repeatedly to their advantage.
While it happened rarely we still managed to win the ball back in dangerous situations. We didn't make much of those situations, as we normally do which is something I will talk about later. Overall our press was very poor.
{ Build- UP} Something I found strange was how we almost didn't even try to build up from the back and went long most of the time. This was even more confusing to me as we had the spareman with FUL placing 2 CBs on Jackson. This was a recipe for disaster
Jackson is almost useless when the team goes long. You could even see it in the video how often he would drop to try to aid our build up and we STILL went long with only 1 forward against 3 CBs. It made no sense why we kept going long, something which was clearly instructed by the coach. Its sensible to go long when you are pressed man2man, but we had the numerical superiority in our half most often.
In this clip, despite not cutting through Fulham with our build up, we still managed to keep control of the ball. We should have done more of this which would have helped us control the game. The poor press + poor build up is why we had 0 control.
When we set-up in possession it was the 3-1-6. I liked the fluidity of the set-up as Enzo sometimes rotated with Gusto to play outside the box. Colwill rotated with Cucu to attack the box etc. The timing of our rotations was also very good, often pulling players and creating space for Palmer to receive centrally. My only critic is that we should have switched to a 3-3-4. The 3-1-6 can be very direct and seeing as the team was struggling to control the ball, we should have changed to a system that forces control and emphasis a tight rest-defense.
This is an example of how dangerous the 3-1-6 can be and we made this mistake in the 60th minute. It leaves few bodies in the midfield and allows a team like FUL play to their strengths. We were leading, change our system and FUL does the same.
We struggled with our press and build up. We also struggled with controlling the game even when we had the ball. Positional play emphasizes structure first and we didn't do that. Often making silly passes, silly carries, etc. Very poor from us.
If people didn't realize FUL essentially played like Everton did against us and many other teams will do the same. - Tuck in the wingers - Aggressive FBs on our wingers - Force DFs to make risky passes/go long We can deal with this by adding someone like a Felix/Nkunku as the 10. Even with them I think we are too static against these teams. Need to switch between shapes much more.
Overall we deserved to lose that game. These games will happen, because the team is young and learning. What matters if we keep improving and take every game as it comes. Ipswich next!