Chelsea vs Manchester United: Tactical Analysis

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Chelsea at home, lined up in their usual 4-2-3-1 with the same team that started against Burnley. While Manchester United also started with their own 4-2-3-1 as well.

The start of the game just encompassed and foretold what the game was going to turn out to be, with the NBA end-to-end game reference being shown right from the 1st minute. I'll explain why the game turned out that way in a bit…

Both team's plan was to try to exploit each other during the transition. Both teams’ attacking strength is on transitions clearly if you’ve watched Chelsea and Manchester United this season.

Chelsea tried to do that by first playing out from goal kicks as we have seen all season, to a mixed degree of success. Man Utd chose their times to press, however, it wasn’t all the time. When Chelsea did it well it gave space for counterattacks.

It was as a result of Chelsea playing out of the back that led to Chelsea's 2nd goal. Disasi usually has 3 options in the build-up. Give it to Gusto, find Palmer in between the lines, or find Jackson with a high ball or line breaker. Jackson dropped to receive this time. Then the Palmer penalty.

Chelsea then settled quickly in their 3-2 shape when on the ball, Gusto was to provide width on the right, while Cucurella inverted on the other side. So 5 in front and 5 at the back is a good shape right? But why did we (both teams) concede so many transitions? In a bit.. stay with me...

Man Utd's shape on the ball varied as it was mostly Casemiero joining the back line like a half back or a single pivot, Mainoo and Fernandes floated just in front of him to make it like a 3 man midfield. Dalot inverted on the left, AWB shuffled between staying in the backline and providing overlapping/underlapping runs for Anthony.

As part of their attempts to quickly transition. Both teams were as much as possible trying to win duels in midfield, causing mistakes to win the ball and transition. It led to many turnovers. Gallagher was mightily important in how we won the ball well to counterattack.

There were 2 themes in this game for both teams:

1. Individual Mistakes

2. Lack of Control

If we want to add 3…

3. Poor rest defence shape.

So I'll just use it to highlight the goals and key actions in the game.

Chelsea lost the ball (trying to break the lines too early) and will still talk about it. With Palmer well marked, Dalot wins it ,but then Mainoo makes a mistake (Theme 1). Gusto makes a mistake still (shrug emoji) but Enzo makes up for it with a beautiful pass. Chelsea have the whole right flank and score from a cutback (United's main weakness).

Man Utd's first goal was a Caicedo mistake (Theme 1). Which brought United back into the game when they weren’t in the game.

When Man Utd tried to play out as well, Chelsea immediately pressed but United didn’t focus on that. Their main threat was the transition, winning the ball from Chelsea's lack of willingness to break the lines every time.

Chelsea defended in a narrow 4-4-2 shape as they do but if the wingers don’t track back, our FBs are always faced with a 2v1 out wide or inside runs.

But the press from Chelsea also wasn’t optimal most times. United could easily use 3 passes to access Chelsea's wide areas. The players weren’t close to each other.

So why were Chelsea conceding so many transition opportunities (to answer the earlier posed question)?

Chelsea this season have always lacked control and this game emphasized it. Lack of ball recycling, always willing to break the lines every single time which shouldn’t be so. That is what allowed Man Utd to win the ball a lot and transition.

What gives a side more control in the game are the "boring" sideways passes which Man City and Arsenal do a lot of, even Liverpool know when to slow it down and speed it up again. Ball temperament/tempo setting is very important, and that’s what the whole Chelsea team seem to lack. The distances were also too much as we were basically in transition mode all game so the structure and temperament of playing had to be there but it wasn’t; so NO CONTROL.

It showed when we lost the ball in Man Utd's half. There was a 3-minute spell early in the 2nd half where the 2 teams tried to break the lines too fast and they continuously lost the ball.

When Chelsea transitioned constantly into Man Utd's half and lost the ball, Chelsea's midfield and defence wouldn’t be able to make the ground up quick enough to counter-press and win the ball back.

The same issue happened to Man Utd. That is very much why the game turned into an end-to-end game. It is also why both teams looked like they had no midfield. It then turned into an NBA game in the 2nd half as most attacks were transitions

Both teams then started to lose the ball and win it back by trying to transition and break the lines. These clips sum it up…

It didn’t help that Garnacho and Anthony were left free to receive with little pressure because the rest of the defence wasn’t well set to defend against counter-attacks.

Man Utd got enough of those transition opportunities to get better chances on goal and eventually their 3rd goal which was also. Theme 1 - another mistake.

Chelsea then faced a low block from there and hardly created something of not. That was mostly how the game went until Noni Madueke took matters into his hands and we did the unthinkable.

It was an encouraging win to see us come back from a goal down to win it at the death, which we have improved massively on this season. But something that needs to improve is the way we control games. Man Utd came back from 2-0, Burnley from 1-0 and 2-1, Leicester from 2-0 to 2-2, it is happening regularly and needs to be curbed.

We should learn how to control these games by recycling possession a lot more, picking our moments to accelerate the game, and having players close enough to counter-press when we lose the ball. Another thing we need to cut out is mistakes from lack of concentration. Too many times games go out of our favour via our own mistakes. We savour the win, but have lots of work to do.

Seun