Chelsea v Burnley: Tactical Analysis

Wasteful and open Chelsea

Chelsea returned from the international break and faced a 19th-placed Burnley side at home. They lined up in their usual 4-2-3-1 formation with Badiashille back in the side and Mudryk finally getting a start in nice form. While Burnley lined up in 4-4-2, with Odobert and Larsen rotated in and out of the wings regularly, but playing more centrally.

Chelsea's plan, as usual was to play vertical from back to front quickly. Burnley didn’t try to sit back early on and went for it, explained by their bright early start.

Burnley tried to do the same thing, bypassing our press and aiming for our wide areas. They created overloads out wide and pushed Viitinha out wide, they were aiming for the runs in the space between our Cbs and FBs, which Larsen made.

Even throughout the game, it was quite easy for Burnley to get their FBs/wingers 1v1 against Chelsea's FBs and easily get past our press, which isn’t good enough. The distances between the lines, closing down was not good enough and gave Burnley space to play.

The annoying thing is that early on we kept encouraging Burnley to get the ball by trying to be too direct, lacking control of the game, and making silly mistakes while building up and causing fouls in dangerous areas. Burnley also used that to pin us in our half during that period, winning the 2nd balls in a good counter-pressing shape.

ironically, Chelsea started being more aggressive winning the ball when Poch started getting aggressive with them to push up and apply pressure, and it kinda of showed immediately...

That was when Burnley being direct began to hurt themselves as Chelsea were finally being aggressive stopping those balls to the wings without opposition. Chelsea began to win the first balls and 2nd balls and began to exert control of the game.

When Chelsea settled into the game and had a build-up shape, they looked like having a 2-3 shape on the ball and 3-2 when Cucurella joined in the back 3, with Enzo orchestrating the play for Chelsea.

Burnley still had their threat in wide areas with Odobert giving Gusto a hard time. They normally gave Odobert a 1v1 with Gusto from Freekicks.

Chelsea began to get lots of Joy playing from back to front vertically bypassing Burnley's half-hearted press and creating chance after chance, but almost making the wrong choices in attack which didn’t finish the game early.

Gallagher didn’t get a lot of cutbacks when he positioned himself well for them. You could then see he deliberately didn’t pass when he was supposed to, it looked like a sort of payback for not receiving the pass, which shouldn’t be but it’s normal in top-level football.

Chelsea were also dangerous on transitions as we always are but it was the same issue of not being clinical to take our chances.

Chelsea also used lots of switches to find more space quickly on the wings and quickly get at Burnley's defence. Enzo was instrumental in doing that in the way he should, as often as he is. Gusto was mostly the receiver on the right.

Chelsea however, in their structure, were positioned poorly to stop counterattacks regularly. The counter press was poor. At times Caicedo and Enzo weren’t close enough to stop Burnley from having transitions of their own especially when Burnley was down to 10 men. The defence was far from the midfield to also close down anyone.

After the red, Burnley changed their shape to a 4-4-1 to be harder to play through in the 2nd half with the introduction of Brownhill and looked to sit and get counters to get chances.

The issue I highlighted in the first half of Chelsea's midfield and shape being too porous was clear immediately for Burnley's goal just after halftime. Burnley looked like the ones that had 11 men and we looked like we had 10 men…

Chelsea now had to break down a low block for the rest of the 2nd half. We didn’t get behind the low block much but a lot of our main threat was from the wings through cutbacks. There weren’t many big chances though.

But it was a real piece of quality that created the goal. Good associative play, a brilliant line-breaking pass from Enzo, a deft flick from Sterling,

and a cool finish from Palmer. Shows the understanding in the team increasing, especially in the way we created our chances.

Then our set piece frailties still showed by allowing a free header on goal and Petrovic should easily save that as well.

The match ended with Chelsea missing another big chance out of 6 big chances, missing 4 of them, and how we also allowed Burnley to create 4 big chances in the 2nd half was very amusing and confusing.

The main action points from the game for me was we create enough and don’t finish enough ( because you can’t score all your chances ). But what has been apparent for months is that our OOP shape is really poor, midfield porous and we allow teams to play through us too easily, conceding 2 goals in 5 straight games. Better control is a must to maximize our technical midfield off the ball as much as on it. Will Poch fix it before the end of the season?

Seun