5 things I noticed - Chelsea 0 Manchester City 1

My unique match review of our loss to City this weekend

11.30am on Saturday morning and Chelsea announced the line up. I scrolled Twitter as I do to check out some reactions, and it was all positive. Most people were happy with the line up, happy that we were going more compact with the three central midfielders, and generally feeling confident.

This was the moment my stomach sank, because when we are all confident and up for the game, it often means we end up struggling, and that’s exactly what we did.

Manchester City is ALWAYS going to be a hugely tough game, but I think we all had a little bit of belief we could make it four wins in a row against them with the Thomas Tuchel train rolling along at speed.

City derailed it, and here’s 5 thing I noticed..

We can’t win them all

In football, you will always lose games even if you are in the form that we have been in. We weren’t going to win them all, and to be honest, losing to City over anyone is a lot easier to swallow due to just how good they are and how much quality they have in their team. And let’s not forget, Pep Guardiola is a very good manager.

City wanted it more and were not going to lose four in a row

From the moment the game kicked off, City players wanted it more; they were winning every second ball, had two men on our players whenever we got the ball, and did not let us have the options to play out.

They were intense, aggressive, and way more up for it.

So should Chelsea’s players be blamed? Maybe, a little. But at the end of the day City’s players had been beaten by us 3 times in a row and it was simply a case that there was more chance of me being 21 again than City allowing it to be four in a row on Saturday. They came to the Bridge with one thing in mind and that was they were NOT losing to Chelsea again, and on these occasions sometimes we just have to applaud their attitudes, brush ourselves off, and go again.

Ruben Loftus-Cheek and Edouard Mendy only positives

Chelsea were poor, but there was a couple of positives to take away from the game. Edouard Mendy was world class in goal and if it wasn’t for him, it could have ended up being an embarrassing scoreline.

Ruben Loftus-Cheek came on and once again took his chance to show what he can do, and he was superb in his 15 minute cameo and once again giving Tuchel something to really think about. He’s now knocking very hard on the door for a starting place.

Thomas Tuchel probably got it wrong

He has often mastered a win or a turnaround for Chelsea since he arrived in January, and there is no doubting his class as a manager. But even though we all agreed with the line up before kick off, perhaps it was the wrong choice.

After all, he had beaten this City team three times with his trusted 3-4-3 formation, so maybe he should not have changed it? I totally understand why he did, he wanted to go more compact and provide more defensive cover. But this game was the deepest and most defensive I’ve seen us be, and maybe we should have gone with the proven winning formula from the last three games instead? We lacked width and attacking numbers and even when we did get out from our own box, the ball soon came flooding back because we could not conjure up an attack ourselves.

Easy to say this in hindsight though of course.

We must end our lacklustre first halves

Too many times now Tuchel has had to make drastic changes at half time to change the game or wake our players up. I have an idea, how about we just play wide awake from minute one? Would that not be a better plan?

Why we aren’t up for it from the off I do not know, but we need to start matches with the same intensity, energy, and aggressive as we have been switching to in the second half after Tuchel has torn them all a new one in the dressing room at half time!

We were better in the second half against City and actually at least attempted to make a game of it, but why didn’t we do that in the first half? This must change.

Simon Phillips