Tactical Analysis: Chelsea drop 1st match to Man City

What can we take from Enzo Maresca's first Premier League match

Chelsea’s first match against Manchester City was fascinating to say the least. Although Manchester City never really got out of 1st gear as Chelsea struggled to deal with the pressure from Manchester City in all phases. A couple of tactics are worth discussing as we could see these trends throughout the season.

Dealing with Build Up Pressure

Building up from the back was one of the things that was most concerning with Chelsea’s ability to deal with pressure. There were times where it didn’t work and there were times that it did as seen in this below clip.

In that clip, Chelsea played with fire more than a few times in that build, especially when Erling Haaland was pressuring Colwill. Still, we saw patience and consistent movement and passing that led Chelsea to beat this pressure.

This was generally positive when it worked; however, that's not what we saw throughout the match.

As we see in the above clip, one simple mistake in the build-up can lead to the worst. Chelsea struggled at times with spacing and decision-making, as you can see. It was a bit of a frantic moment, but deciding to put the ball long in a misplaced matter led to the worst outcome.

Another instance of decision-making issues arose not just from the centre backs, but also from Robert Sanchez, who unfortunately makes these mistakes on a regular basis. This frequency underscores the urgent need for improvement.

In an ideal build-up, Chelsea likes to widen out their center back to allow the opposite side's holding midfielders to occupy that vacated space. This allows the ball to be received from the center back and to start a break by catching on the half turn and looking for the LB or LW to dart down the other side.

This allows Chelsea to consistently dictate to the press if the passes go according to plan because they are able to move the ball while the opposition is still transitioning to their next phase of the press. However, if they are turned over at any of these points, it leads to a fairly wide-open center of the pitch.

Final Third Possession

So far under Maresca, Chelsea hasn’t made much headway with creating many chances in the final third. I think that this comes down to a few things: the formation that Chelsea ran against Manchester City will likely not be the one we see for most of the matches.

In this match we saw both Malo Gusto providing width and stepping inside to allow Palmer to play that right wing position. However, it's clear that this approach did not provide enough options in the box, highlighting the need for a tactical change.

What I would like to see is Palmer move inside, either moving Gusto into an inverted role or having Caicedo play in the inverted position and bringing on a right winger, allowing Palmer to play more centrally

What I like about this possibility is that you get a more dynamic player attacking the half-spaces, and you still have a player in Neto or Madueke on the right who can make more dynamic runs. I see why Maresca opted for utilizing a two-man midfield to protect a relatively shaky backline, and I also see the value in putting Gusto in to overlap with Palmer; however, I think it took far too many players away from goal and led to a limited amount of chance creation.

We will see how Chelsea's lineup here in the next couple of matches will be against lesser opposition, but I expect that we will see some changes in the next few matches. It's early yet, and I think with the changing pieces still coming in and out of Chelsea, with less than 10 days left in the window, we will see what happens with the tactics.

~ CFCDP