Manchester United v Chelsea Tactical Analysis
Tactical breakdown of Chelsea's worst performance of the season, so far.....
In an unpredictable football world, Chelsea often seems to have their own dance routine—a symphony of highs and lows that keep all but Chelsea fans on the edge of their seat.
As they squared off against Manchester United, it was the kind of match where you couldn't help but wonder if Chelsea had a secret agreement with chaos. Well you could say that about Chelsea since the Spurs game…
Let’s see how this fiasco unfolded on the tactical side of things….
Chelsea lined up in their usual 4231 formation under Poch, with Poch leaving the 4 centre backs experiment behind (which was of necessity against Brighton).
James was back but strangely on the bench (que rumours of injuries) and Gallagher was the most high-profile miss due to a suspension from a red card against Brighton.
Interestingly, Palmer, Enzo and Caicedo formed the midfield trio, deployed for the first time from the start this season. While Ten Hag made the unexpected decision to drop Rashford to the bench. The real surprise came with the inclusion of Amrabat, especially considering the recent emergence of the talented academy midfielder, Kobe Mainoo, who had been delivering standout performances.
LINE UPS
MAN UTD’S PRESS
Both teams started the game with a high press, which is usual for both teams, but it was clear which team’s high press was effectively getting them back the ball and which team’s press was easily cut through.
Man Utd’s press was a man-to-man press, Holjund tried to force our CBs to play one side by arching his run to block a pass back to the other CB when the ball was with one of them, and Bruno and Mctominay pressed both Caicedo and Enzo respectively, Anthony and Garncho both tried to block the passing lanes from our CBs to the Fullbacks on their side
Then much deeper, Amrabat was tasked with Palmer, When Man Utd pressed Chelsea from Goalkicks, Garncho then pressed Disasi, While Shaw pushed high to match Cucurella whenever he tried to go high and wide himself to be an outlet in the Chelsea build-up.
Man Utd’s press looked like a 4-1-4-1 from the defence to attack when well choreographed. The press as well as Chelsea’s carelessness in possession which we will get to, contributed to making it hard for Chelsea to play out of the back. Here is how it looked in action.
Then we also examine Chelsea’s press
Chelsea pressed in a 4-4-2 shape as we have seen all season, except twice we played against Brighton where we also pressed in a 4-1-4-1 shape. Jackson and Palmer formed the front 2, with Jackson pressing Man Utd’s Centre backs, Palmer returning the marking favour to Amrabat, Enzo and Caicedo were tasked with Mctominay and Bruno respectively.
As I said earlier, only one team’s pressing action was effective and it sure wasn’t Chelsea’s. The shape and intensity was very off for yesterday’s game, for a team that started the season as one of the most effective pressing teams and is still showing the same over a forth-night ago against Man City, the pressing has become unrecognisable recently even since Newcastle. Lack of intensity, and even the smartness we had in pressing seems to have eroded. Is it fatigue after mostly playing a game a week?
Let’s examine an example of the lethargic press, here continued from the image above, Chelsea having forced Man Utd down the right,
When on the right side, Mudryk, Jackson, Enzo and Colwill rightly caging them to the right side, but what if I told you Man Utd got out of this situation? You don’t believe me?
Enzo after initially tracking and marking Mctominay, Enzo ball-watches and loses track of him, seconds after and Mctominay is in behind him, receiving Anthony’s pass to then give Dalot who Colwill lost as well who got in behind.
Man Utd create a dangerous chance of out of that situation
Let’s see Chelsea’s press in motion and how Man Utd got through it easily…
Chelsea’s build-up errors
Now we’ve seen how Man Utd’s press caused Chelsea errors while building out, let’s see how Chelsea also caused their issues through a barrage of errors playing out of the back, which was very peculiar considering we have been so good at doing that recently. It gave Man Utd lots of chances that they didn’t bury as well, which we will touch on in this piece. There were lots of structural errors with our build-up yesterday.
Let’s see some of them…
The issue was Chelsea were too far away from each other in the build-up and a good build-up requires the players to be in close proximity to each other so they can use their numerical/technical superiority to pass their way out of tight spaces, especially without a ball carrier like Carney Chukwuemeka who we miss in midfield.
Here we see Enzo, who was as deep as Caicedo against Brighton in the last game, staying high in the half spaces trying to receive, Caicedo had to dribble out of pressure and still carry a long distance before finding Enzo. We were too far from each other.
The only times Chelsea provided options in the build-up was when we got out of the press it also coincided when we weren’t trying to do everything at 100 mph which didn’t suit Enzo, Caicedo and Palmer. It was times we managed to also have settled possession in their half.
This is a structural issue from yesterday Poch needs to rectify, I wouldn’t over-emphasize it because it was one of the only times I couldn’t recognize our build-up play. It has been fantastic recently.
Chelsea’s passing errors
I could name these Chelsea errors in general but there are a lot of categories of them from yesterday’s game so I’ll just go with this. We made lots of basic passing errors time and time again, I am wondering if it’s a mentality issue, were they spooked by the Old Trafford crowd? Because we were very sloppy, after half-time when we gained some form of control when Reece came on, it was a Disasi passing error that brought us back into making more errors and losing control of the game once again. It led to the Man Utd goal unsurprisingly. Jackson and Enzo miscommunicated and they make a mess of the situation.
Mctominay’s goal
Again we defended the box very poorly, the mistake left us short but we have Silva and Disasi defending both the near post and nobody, especially Disasi, anticipates the cutback.
Chelsea’s missed chances
In attack, Chelsea planned to capitalize on United being poor in transition and tried to play out of the back to get through their press and cut through Man Utd’s midfield which has been constantly exploited this season. Chelsea did on several occasions especially in the first half, despite how poor we were, we managed to get in behind Man Utd's midfield from their own mistakes (not only Chelsea that made mistakes in possession) and at times our build-up. It was either we missed the big chance or we messed up the final action, which was reminiscent of our run before our last 10 games in the Premier League.
If we were a clinical side, we would have come away with more than we did. That Broja late chance that hit the bar would have been a sucker punch to Man Utd after the chances they too created.
Good thing we aren’t eyy….
Man Utd missed chances
Man Utd also had chances of their own and they should have rightly put us to the sword on many occasions, but Sanchez and some terrible finishing as well from Garnacho and co made it so that we always had a chance in the game, which we couldn’t capitalize on.
Man Utd ended the game with an xG of 4.17, according to Sofa Score, which is the highest Chelsea has conceded in the premier league this season. and yes higher than Newcastle.
Here are some of Man Utd’s missed chances against Chelsea.
It has been a theme of recent weeks for Chelsea to concede high xGs, we did the same against Man City and Newcastle, and we have slowly become very easy to play against which was different at the start of the season, especially in the wide areas.
Chelsea are poor at defending wide areas
I mentioned in loads of my match review threads on ‘‘X’' since preseason that Chelsea are a compact side under Poch off the ball generally, but their weakness is in the wide areas because of how narrow they are.
We can see an example of how United exploited this yesterday.
Firstly, Mctominay receives the ball, with little pressure which is the first mistake, Enzo was charged with pressing him when on the ball and he didn’t.
He then finds Bruno in the half-spaces (space between the midfield and defence and between the fullbacks and centrebacks), Sterling doesn’t get tight to him enough.
And he’s able to find Shaw who accelerates into space leaving both Palmer and Sterling in his wake. The worst thing is Sterling was in front of Palmer and Palmer still gets to Shaw before him.
Immediately after, because of no coverage in the wide areas, Man Utd had a 2 v 1 against Cucurella, and of course, he wouldn’t know who to mark. Shaw had the time and space to put a ball into the box.
When James came on too, he suffered a lot of it as well. When he goes narrow, no one covers the outside, it is a structural problem and it needs to be rectified by Poch.
Chelsea defending crosses
Another issue we have been facing recently is defending crosses, whether it be from corners or open-play crosses. It is a fall out of the space we give to opposition teams and our wingers fail to track those runs well enough to stop them. If you don’t stop them out of the box, then surely you must be much better stopping them in the box, apparently no…
This was evident in Mctominay’s 2nd goal as well.
Break down of Mctominay’s goal…
Maguire is firstly unmarked in the middle of the pitch, no one is close to him - a disjointed press.
He then finds Regulion, who loses Sterling, we all know he doesn’t track back enough.
He then finds Garnacho, who is left in acres of space and puts in the cross to find Mctominay for the 2nd goal.
Colwill goes down too easily and should be handling that. The whole attack and midfield were bypassed by 2 passes and Garnacho still ends up in that amount of space is - very very poor all around from everyone.
Here is Mctominay’s goal in motion.
Chelsea showed a lot of structural issues, right from our pressing structure to blocking Man Utd from easily accessing the midfield, which we very much missed the work rate and endeavour of who I would still put as our best player of the season in Conor Gallagher. No matter how many people wanted him out of the line-up, with this type of performance, it’s not happening anytime soon.
We struggle to defend wide areas because we defend narrow, but then we equally struggle to defend the incoming crosses from those wide areas. Normally our press was good enough to limit being exploited in the wide areas, but the press was poor and has been deteriorating for weeks.
Poch has a lot of things to work on, on the training pitch, and that is coming from a fan of what Poch has been doing mostly this season, so I am not saying it lightly.
On seeing a lot of “Poch Out“ on the X time line. Although we produced comfortably our worst performance of the season, there is still context to think about as I like to do.
We have multiple injured and suspended players, which will undoubtedly make a difference to this team. The team still consists of many inexperienced youngsters who would be individual project players in other teams but have all been packed to be in one team until they “grow up“ in the knowledge of the game and build more consistency in performances.
We will continue to see more inconsistent performances and conversion rate and its a credit to him that we’ve seen fewer days of being outplayed like yesterday and against Newcastle in the 2nd Half. There will have to be patience with this side and Poch, because in my opinion the project still suits him.
Great breakdown Mobolaji - thanks for that.
I have to agree with the previous comments entirely, I even said after the game that Man U didn't allow Chelsea space to play and as a consequence Chelsea looked worse than they really were!
Its nice to have it explained why and how, now do you think you could explain to Poche for us why Disasi is not the required standard and why having 55% of the possession doesn't win you games if your team is passing the ball around in their own backyard.
One interesting fact from your analysis if i read it correctly was Chelsea had 55% of the possession?
If your subsequent article are of such a high standard then I look forward to them as required reading