A 2-2 draw with the Baggies highlights many of the problems we’ve had. It was a late Eden Hazard penalty that saved us from embarrassment against the Baggies and also saved Mourinho’s might 100 games unbeaten at the Bridge in the Premier League. We have struggled to break down teams that ‘park the bus’ at Stamford Bridge and have scored most of our goals courtesy of defensive errors, counter attacks or the occasional moment of brilliance. Obviously we have to realize that most teams that will come to the Bridge will look to defend deep, we’re not going to play on the counter in most of our games. The question is what has happened to that football Chelsea played in the 1st half vs Hull City or in the 1st 20 minutes vs Aston Villa? The intricate passing and combination play, the trickery, the 1-2s and all the things that had characterised Chelsea last season, where has it gone? Even monochrome devices are more colourful than some of our attacks!
The midfield
It’s been quite frustrating to see Juan Mata and John Obi Mikel on the bench. Under Rafael Benitez, Ramires and Mikel had cemented a partnership. Mikel would barely put a foot wrong in the midfield, provide protection for the backline and that would give Ramires the incentive to make his infamous bursting runs- unfortunately those runs are now memories. Lampard had a more ‘subtle’ role. Lampard is a legend and no one denies that but at 35, it’s quite obvious that uh….. HE’S NOT LIKE HE USED TO BE! Mikel in 6 appearances this season has had 6 interceptions to Lampard’s 11 appearances and 8 interceptions. Basic math would say that Mikel has an average of 1/game and Lampard has an average of 0.72 (rounded to 2 significant figures of course).
What’s ironic is that ‘work-rate’ has been an excuse for not starting Juan Mata? It’s surprising how the player who was nominated for PFA Player of the Year has all of a sudden no place in his team. Juan Mata is the sort of player who makes players around him play better. He links up with other players and helps them combine. Last season he was given the role he dreamed of, the role of the no.10. He was given the freedom to thrive, to annoy defenders. He was a menace for all teams. So why’s he on the bench? A sight as painful as receiving an arm burn! Juan Mata in 7 appearances has created 11 chances and has a passing accuracy of 87%, Juan Mata hasn’t played a single entire game this season and has only started twice. Surely if Mikel is there, his defensive contribution will help the rest of the team going forward and that means Mata should be able to start?
So we demand our no.10s to be useful defensively yet our defensive midfielders are allowed to not be good defensively?
No width nor do we have a deep lying playmaker A 6 year old child’s story for English has more creativity than our midfield pivot. We attempted to get Daniele De Rossi but once we failed to get him, did we really have a plan B or try to get someone else? By the looks of things Ramires’ is supposed to be the ‘orchestrator’ in our midfield, no wonder the orchestra sounds like nails scratching down a blackboard…………
So now we’re going to talk about the former in the title since this is one that has annoyed Chelsea fans a lot. It is no secret that the Blues’ lack any genuine wingers due to which they are unable to stretch defences. Arsenal suffer from a similar problem, Arsenal’s solution was to encourage their wingers to get forward, due to which Sagna bombing down the right is a common sight, that was of course the source of Arsenal’s goal at home to Borussia Dortmund in the Champions League.
THAT’S IT! WE FOUND THE SOLUTION! ENCOURAGE OUR FULL BACKS TO GET FORWARD! They’ll pump brilliant crosses into the box! Oh……….. we’ve got Ivanovic playing down the right……
Above we can see Ivanovic’s crosses. Absolutely horrendous for a player in a home game vs WBA, at a top club like Chelsea this has to be better. To be honest with you who can blame Ivanovic? He’s a centre back who’s being asked to play at right-back of course he will struggle. It’s no secret that he will struggle. In a 1-0 win at home to Manchester United in the 2009/10 season, Manchester United played a lopsided formation which allowed Ivanovic time on the ball because of his technical disabilities. Now everyone we play against is adopting that.
The above stats show us exactly what we saw yesterday. That Ivanovic was encouraged to go forward while Azpilicueta was supposed to be the 3rd defender. The reason being Azpilicueta (being a right footer) was playing at LB and Ivanovic (also a right footer) was playing at RB. So why the more technically gifted full back was forced to play at LB? Imagine being on the field, defenders surrounding you and you look up to see who’s in open space…… oh it’s Ivanovic…….. got no other alternative so I’ll have to pass it to him. A few seconds later a cross hits a West Brom player and goes out for a throw in. There is the story of the game. So shouldn’t it be the other way around? Let Ivanovic play at LB (Mourinho claimed the reason he was playing a right footer at LB will deal better with a winger cutting inside so Ivanovic who is excellent defensively should play that role of course!) and let Azpilicueta come forward down the right hand side! There you go! You’ve added 2+2 and it’s equal to 4, unfortunately some our fans think 2+2 is equal to sq root(9)*10*sin(27.5)/11. Overcomplicating things and then getting the wrong answer……..
To conclude, these were some of the problems that were evident in the game yesterday. It’s frustrating and makes you want to pull your hair. The sooner these issues are solved the better. What do you think about our problems? I’d love to hear your opinion. Kindly discuss below. Stats courtesy of Squawka.
Didn't you hear? It's the new trend to whine about Hazard. Can't wait to see the sheep getting all excited when he performs decent again.. oh right he IS performing decent, but anything less than brilliant is unacceptable. Only Schurrle is allowed to be 'just decent' because he cost a bit less and is our new boy.
I have high hopes for Willian, you can see he has immense talent especially witnessing it when it he tore us apart as a Shaktar player. Hopefully now he's had quite a few game time minutes in the premiership he will have a better understanding and will take off from here onwards.
I think it's interesting to note that his best performance with us in a while came when Bertrand was playing behind him instead of Ash. Ryan, for 60 mins, made forward runs in every single attack, often making overlapping runs to stretch the Cardiff defense. He kept at least one of those two defenders on the right (our left) occupied and gave Eden more room to work with while when Cole plays and rarely makes supporting runs, Eden is left double-marked most of the time. Not saying that it was all down to that, just that it might have been big factor.
JamesGodfrey got a reaction from Stats in 🇧🇷 Willian