The Low-Block and why we struggle, especially at THE BRIDGE

There are so many reasons, but one of them really intrigues me.

Good Morning ladies and gents!

Today I am taking a look at SOME of the MULTIPLE reasons we struggle against a Low-Block, especially when playing at home.

So Chelsea have the 6th smallest pitch in the entire Premier League, which is fairly surprising, especially when the likes of Burnley, Bournemouth and Nottingham Forest have bigger. In fact the only teams who have the same or smaller sized pitches are Liverpool, Sheffield United, Crystal Palace, Everton, Luton & Fulham.

The fact our pitch is smaller obviously assists teams who want to be tighter and more organised as they have less space to cover. They can be tight, be organised and not worry about Chelsea creating pockets and breaking the lines, they will shift from side to side as Chelsea do with the ball and then when Chelsea try something over the top or through the middle there are always bodies in the way to limit their access.

This is obviously not the only reason but when over 65% of your matches during a season are on smaller, tighter pitches you really need to be good at breaking through tight spaces and low-blocks.

I can’t remember the last time Chelsea didn’t struggle against a low-block (apart from the odd occasion), maybe back to Mourinho 2.0 or before then. Creativity is an issue for Chelsea, especially when 2 of our top 3 creators (James & Chilwell) spend significant time on the treatment table. Cole Palmer (most creative player statistically) was excellent Saturday and created some really good opportunities not only to shoot but also for other players to play simple passes/crosses and if that unbelievable pass over the top of the Brentford defence had fallen to anyone apart from Marc Cucurella we would have gone on to win that game in my opinion, we were truly dominating at that point.

Part of the issue for me is that Chelsea do not score the first goal often enough, we have conceded first in 6 league games already this season, winning one, drawing one and losing 4. 3 of the 4 losses have been at home where we have then struggled to create and beat the low block. The only win coming away at Burnley who have a larger pitch and more space to create and break lines.

Scoring the first goal draws teams out of their tight and organised structure which then enables you to get in behind or through the lines to score goals, look at Burnley away for example, as soon as we got back onto level terms it drew them out and pushed their defensive line up and our remaining goals all came from getting in behind their defensive line or there being gaps/spaces for us to exploit.

We are unbeaten in games where we have not conceded first this season, that says a lot.

There is a reason Jose Mourinho had such a great record at Stamford Bridge, we were so defensively tight and organised and often scored the first goal which made it harder for teams to break us down.

How do we solve this?

Could expanding the size of the pitch at the Bridge help? Definitely, although this isn’t plausible overnight.

Should we use a low-block/tighter more organised defensive structure at home, especially before we score the first goal? Potentially, although you do not want to ‘Park the bus’ and there is a fine line!

We need to find the middle ground to enable us to score more goals at home but especially the first goal, and also be tighter defensively, if we can nail that it will help to make Stamford Bridge a fortress again

I hope you all enjoyed this article, please let me know what you thought!

Luke Rushbrook