Pointing The Finger

[manpe 10,855]

I'm not a fan of zonal marking, hopefully it will be an efficient mix of man-to-man and zonal, because biggest threats need to be marked tightly all the time.

[SeB 1,281]

I do think that we've a had a problem defending set pieces this season, but I believe it is something that can be sorted out easily by AVB. Bossingwa, more often than not, the guilty party in my opinion should not be on the far post but maybe the first defender (instead of miereles in the pic) because of his weak abilities in the air. Coupled with some better man-to-man marking, I think our defense will be fine this season.

I don't want to take that as a pretext to shoot at Bosingwa for fun, I used to defend the player for almost 2 seasons but I must admit I'm not really a big fan of Bosingwa's apparent personality, I feel a lack of commitment from him, some bad arrogance (You just have to compare his body language of 2008/2009 and how he used to behave after). Yes, Bosingwa is not Ivanovic in the air, but in my opinion he does not even makes the effort in these set-pieces or in his marking... We feel like if he does not gives a fuck about his elastic, neglected, sloppy, careless marking.

Defensively speaking, some player's careless markings the only thing that really wrinkles me, be between the attacker and the GK is not that complicated. Coach BlueLion can confirm it's a basic thing learned to kids.

Some teams in Premier League base their play in a direct philosophia and on their set-pieces (considering the average height of the players). No need to name them, they are Blackburn (even if with them they rather used to be), Stoke City, Bolton... It's not Chelsea's main asset, no need to think if there is a better style than another, every team plays with it's skills (except Blackburn ) so works mainly on thoses parts of the game to be better.

You raise a good point here SeB about our offensive deficiencies from dead ball situations, at present a poor return. Although I think its largely to do with our poor distribution from dead ball situations but mainly corners, how many times do we see of one our players take a corner & it hits the oppositions first defender! Mind you I have to say JT gets fouled almost every time he goes up for a corner but the refs never seem to notice?! Definitely room for improvement though, again I'm sure AVB will be aware of it & something he will also get the team working on when they return from international duty.

I don't know if that the lack of movement is a consequence of the lack of decent FK or CK taker = the players knows they won't have the ball and that Lampard... or Malouda... or Drogba... ... or ANELKA !!! will - as you said - completely miss the penalty spot zone

Or if it's because the taker sees no movement, so he decides to cross kick in the ball with no precise target. But I must admit it would be a little bit problematic !

Anyway we have Mata now, he is able to put great deliveries on set pieces on so it's a good point for the future

[BigBlue 1]

Very well done thread, hope to see more of these! Gives great insight to our game!