Liverpool vs Chelsea: Tactical Analysis

A damning defeat....

Chelsea faced top-of-the-table Liverpool in fine form after losing one in their last 5 in all comps. Let’s see what happened...

Chelsea lined up with largely the same team as the last game against Aston Villa especially in attack and midfield given how much they looked like a unit then. Liverpool went with their usual 433 formation as well.

Liverpool's shape was a 3-2/3-1 in possession, and Chelsea didn’t press them high enough allowing their CBs enough time and space to hurt Chelsea with switches of play and balls in behind.

Puzzling, this was the same Chelsea team that didn't let Villa breathe in the previous game. It was disappointing the press was so passive which meant that Van Dijk had time and space to run his trademark to-Salah-type switches time and time again.

No press + Highline = easy balls in behind…

After seeing that multiple times, the defence began to drop gradually then the trade-off was the space in between the midfield and defence being like the Pacific Ocean.

This meant that Chelsea were not close to Liverpool when they were doing their central combination play. Liverpool's plan when we dropped deep was to prevent those balls in behind and to overload the centre of the pitch and let Chelsea leave the wide areas open for switches of play. This allowed Bradley and Diaz to have 1v1s against Chelsea Fullbacks and they made it count with goals and assists and lots of space in the wide areas.

Further exploiting Chelsea's weakness in defending their wide areas, as I’ve explained, is Chelsea’s weakness since preseason and it is something Liverpool exploited in this game.

To show that that is what Chelsea should have done, the times they did put pressure on Liverpool's defence, it worked.

The fear of Nunez exploiting Silva’s pace looked like a concern the team wanted to avoid so lots of the time, 2 men were on him. But it rendered pressing ineffective as both CBs were pinned - it happened against City too with Haaland. It happened regardless.

Chelsea initially didn't try to build up with short passes but hit the ball long to try to get the 2nd balls to move forward, but we were outnumbered by Liverpool's defence when we ventured forward since we were far away from each other as a team. Either that or Liverpool won the ball easily as a result of *possessing no target man in the line-up. Petrovic would have needed to play short a lot of the time and targeted long balls to help play out of the Liverpool press because of that but instead, he looked only comfortable booting it long when there were better options in shorter passes.

*Made in bold by me (Simon on editing) as THIS right here, is why we should have replaced Broja with the same profile (It’s NOT about Broja as a player and whether he’s been good or bad).

That was the theme for the majority of the game. Chelsea players looked like they didn’t know where and when their teammates moved in and out of certain positions, under-hit passes and over-hit through balls to no runs. It looked disjointed even after playing out of the press.

Chelsea struggled without Enzo dropping deep to help them play out, and it is what he should have been set to do from the start. But a lot of the time in the first 30 minutes, he had to arrive late to build-ups cause of being too high in the LHS (left half space) which should have not been the case. You can do it against smaller teams that hardly press, but not Liverpool that press constantly.

When Enzo was deeper at times and available, he was instrumental to us playing out of the press when we did. It provided the CBs with another option when progressing the ball, not only Caicedo.

The times we managed to get out of the Liverpool intense press, the decision-making was not good enough.

But a lot of the time, Liverpool's counter-press seemed too much for Chelsea to play out of, it was intense.

Our mistakes also were apparent throughout the game especially lapses in concentration and technical mistakes that contributed to the first, 2nd and 4th Liverpool goals.

Chelsea looked like a team that didn’t prepare well enough for this game and looked lost from the start despite the bad officiating. Liverpool didn’t have to be at their best, we were just very bad. Poch has lots of things to fix, not least Enzo's role especially when it’s against a team that presses.

Lots of work is needed to get more points, starting against Wolves at home on Sunday which is a must-win.

Seun