closed Chelsea 3-3 Southampton

[Vytis33 1,046]

I don't miss many games but wasn't able to watch anything past the first two Werner goals yesterday.  Just watched full highlights now and holy shit that was abysmal.  I knew it wasn't gonna be good but I'm actually shocked how bad that truly was.  Total circus

 

 

[Jase 43,479]

LOL

[MoroccanBlue 5,200]

Out of his depth if that’s the case

[Azul 1,615]

3 hours ago, Jason said:

LOL

So he basically confirmed my suspicion. He was instructing the team to stay back and defend against Soton in the second half. What we should've done is press and try to score more goals to kill the game off.

Also, what he just said is very concercing. After reading that we all know that he has no control over the dressing room and players don't listen to his instructions lol.

[Magic Lamps 11,452]

He is correct tho. We lost a lot of balls due to trying to play our way out of trouble when we clearly couldn’t deal with the press anymore. Not that this is the way to go for us but we shouldn’t over complicate things when the players are out of steam anyway. 

[Strike 6,965]

5 hours ago, Jason said:

LOL

Pragmatic to admit that we can't play out of their press and shows how bad the team is in playing ball! A long ball would also give possession straight back anyway

[Jase 43,479]

Why Chelsea gave up their lead so meekly

https://theathletic.com/2144166/2020/10/18/chelsea-southampton-premier-league/

Long before it arrived in the 92nd minute, Southampton’s equaliser felt inevitable. Pinned back by a combination of Ralph Hasenhuttl’s high press and their own mistakes, Chelsea had conceded a steady stream of good chances prior to Jannik Vestergaard glancing Theo Walcott’s shot just inside Kepa Arrizabalaga’s far post. Nine of the visitors’ 13 shots came in the second half, six of them from inside the box, four of which found the target.

This isn’t a new problem for Chelsea under Frank Lampard; 15 of the 54 Premier League goals they conceded last season hit the net between minutes 76 and 90, giving them the third-worst late-game defensive record in the division, behind only Aston Villa (18) and relegated Norwich City (17). There were eight matches in which they failed to win after scoring first, yielding six draws and two defeats.

After the game, Lampard highlighted costly individual errors that made Southampton’s fightback possible, but there were also broader structural issues that set the stage for the visitors’ dominance in the second half at Stamford Bridge, and a failure of game management on the touchline as well as on the pitch. The Athletic went back through the footage to tell the story of another Chelsea masterclass in self-destruction.

53 minutes: Early in the second half it’s clear Southampton have set their stall out to try to dictate the direction of Chelsea’s play. Walcott and Nathan Redmond push up alongside Danny Ings and Che Adams to form a high wall of pressure in front of Jorginho, who has slotted in between Kurt Zouma and Andreas Christensen. Southampton are determined not to let their opponents build through the middle of the pitch, and any pass to N’Golo Kante is rendered far too risky.

Jorginho ultimately plays it to Zouma and the ball finds Ben Chilwell by the touchline. Timo Werner drops deep to offer a passing option, but James Ward-Prowse easily intercepts the attempt to find the Germany international. Southampton are on the front foot, and Chelsea’s midfield has been taken out of the game. This will become a recurring theme during the second half.

54 minutes: Cesar Azpilicueta is forced to foul Redmond just inside his own half after passing the ball straight to him. Ryan Bertrand floats the subsequent free kick to the far post, where Kai Havertz competes well in the air against Vestergaard but can’t clear the danger.

Neither can Zouma or Christian Pulisic, and the passage of play ends with Ings working a decent shooting chance just outside the box and firing wide.

56-57 minutes: Southampton work the ball around Chelsea’s own half-hearted press to the right touchline, where Kyle Walker-Peters shapes to play a pass inside towards Ward-Prowse. Jorginho recognises what is happening and moves to intercept…

… but he can’t get there in time, and Ward-Prowse whips a first-time pass over the top of Chelsea’s defence:

Zouma, under pressure from Adams, makes it clear from his body shape that he’s playing a pass back to Kepa. The ball is at an awkward height but provided he makes a solid contact, it shouldn’t matter. In the middle, Christensen has allowed Ings to drift a few yards in front of him, while Azpilicueta isn’t particularly worried:

The pass is scuffed, forcing Kepa to dash and slide in to make sure he gets there ahead of Adams. If he clears or smothers it, the danger is gone. If he doesn’t, the position that Christensen has allowed Ings to drift into means there will be big trouble:

Kepa somehow completely misses the ball. Christensen makes a brilliant recovery slide to prevent Adams from giving Ings a tap-in, but the ball is still live. Kepa flies back towards his own post but fails to clear again. Zouma has completely stopped, seemingly still hoping that one of his team-mates can redeem his initial mistake.

Only when Adams is pulling his foot back to shoot does Zouma attempt to get involved again, and by then it’s too late. The shot beats Kepa and Azpilicueta on the line:

71 minutes: A nice team move finished by Havertz almost immediately restored Chelsea’s lead, but they aren’t managing it well. Here, six blue shirts are in the Southampton half, none applying any pressure to Vestergaard as he winds up a long diagonal pass that will take them all out of the game:

Chilwell wins the header, but the result is a four-versus-four situation while Kante and Jorginho scramble to recover. With a one-goal lead, this type of situation simply shouldn’t be allowed to happen.

78 minutes: Lampard has made only one substitution, replacing Mount with Hakim Ziyech and sticking with 4-2-3-1, despite growing evidence that Jorginho and Kante are being overrun. Another header from Chilwell is brought down in the visiting midfield. Jorginho rushes forward to press Oriol Romeu but is easily sidestepped, opening an avenue to a relatively straightforward pass through to Walcott…

… and once again, Chelsea’s entire midfield and attack are bypassed, leaving Walcott free to drive at Lampard’s defence in another four-versus-four situation. He finds Adams, who shoots wide from the angle.

81 minutes: Chilwell has the ball on the left touchline again and, with Kante and Jorginho in no position to present a passing option, he elects to go long towards Werner. It worked in the first half, when Chelsea were able to turn Southampton’s defenders and get Werner running through on goal…

… but on this occasion there isn’t enough on the pass to get it over Vestergaard, and Werner has no chance of winning an aerial duel. Possession is cheaply lost and, seconds later, Jan Bednarek is allowed to advance into the Chelsea half. Walcott has taken up a great position between Chilwell, Kante and Pulisic:

The ball finds him, he drives into the box and crosses low for Ings, who is able to force a save out of Kepa:

85 minutes: Southampton’s press is relentless and Chelsea’s passing is getting more passive. Having just received the ball from Jorginho, Christensen tries to go back to him with Ings and Adams in close attendance. He manages to scramble it clear — just:

87 minutes: Lampard has finally moved to shore things up, bringing on Reece James for Pulisic and shifting to 4-3-3, but Chelsea continue to gift Southampton the ball. Azpilicueta tries to free Werner with a first-time ball over the top via his weaker left foot, but it hangs in the air and Bednarek easily takes it away:

90+1 minutes: After a panicky head-tennis sequence in Chelsea’s defensive third, the ball rolls kindly out to Ziyech. He has a relatively simple pass to free fellow substitute Tammy Abraham and Havertz, who are primed for a counterattack. Instead he plays it straight to Ibrahima Diallo:

Southampton almost immediately launch the ball towards Chelsea’s right-back position. James, eager to provide cover, dashes to deal with it but only succeeds in blocking off Bertrand. A free kick is given:

90+2 minutes: Havertz is once again stationed towards the back post, standing behind Walcott…

… but when Bertrand swings in the cross, Walcott is able to find space simply by standing still. Havertz runs away from him, Zouma heads the ball to him, and Vestergaard glances his shot inside Kepa’s far post:

“In the second half I wouldn’t blame the shape of the team, more that we didn’t deal with the fact that Southampton were really keen to put us under pressure in their own half,” Lampard said. “We wanted to miss out their press, we didn’t do enough and that meant we turned the ball over in our own half, which irrespective of shape is always a problem.

“There is certainly a game management element of it. We want to have a lead and see it off. We turn over the ball that led to the free kick and then it is about the second balls. There are a lot of elements that led to it, you can recreate that in training and talk about it a lot but it is very disappointing when it happens.”

Lampard is generally good at diagnosing the nature of Chelsea’s defensive problems after the fact, which makes the lack of improvement all the more puzzling. Last season yielded 54 goals conceded, the worst defensive record of the Roman Abramovich era. Five matches into 2020-21, they are on course to let in 68.

Unless that trend changes markedly, it’s hard to see how this expensively-assembled team — or their manager — can possibly meet significantly raised expectations.

[Jase 43,479]

3 hours ago, Magic Lamps said:

He is correct tho. We lost a lot of balls due to trying to play our way out of trouble when we clearly couldn’t deal with the press anymore. Not that this is the way to go for us but we shouldn’t over complicate things when the players are out of steam anyway. 

Going long to beat the press is fine but the thing is, who were we trying to play the long balls to? Unless we played long balls into space for them to run into, Werner, Havertz, Mount and Pulisic weren't going to win headers in the air for us. We would have just given possession away cheaply and be under pressure. 

[Jase 43,479]

4 hours ago, Azul said:

So he basically confirmed my suspicion. He was instructing the team to stay back and defend against Soton in the second half. What we should've done is press and try to score more goals to kill the game off.

Also, what he just said is very concercing. After reading that we all know that he has no control over the dressing room and players don't listen to his instructions lol.

What I don't like is and this is not just based on the comments after Saturday's game but also past games when we didn't win, he'll pin the blame on players for not doing this and that (he may not do it in an aggressive manner a la Mourinho but his comments tend to come off that way) to stop the opposition even though it's clear tactical changes is needed from the manager to help the players deal with the opposition. Take Saturday for example, it was clear that we were struggling to deal with Southampton in the second half but what did Lampard do? No tactical reaction after Southampton changed theirs for the second half and the first decisive sub in terms of changing the shape came in the 87th minute(!!!) when James came on. Sure, individuals screwed up for the goals against Southampton but Lampard's changes has tended to come too late more often than not even when it's clear the game is going away from the team. Individuals can be blamed for giving up goals but they can't be blamed if the manager doesn't make any tactical changes or make them fast enough to react to the opposition's changes. Either Lampard is massively overrating this team or is just tactically naive to react to Plan B, C, D etc and he isn't going to last long if he's going pursue this "it's not my fault, it's the players" route whenever we don't win games.

[lucio 5,402]

33 minutes ago, Jason said:

Going long to beat the press is fine but the thing is, who were we trying to play the long balls to? Unless we played long balls into space for them to run into, Werner, Havertz, Mount and Pulisic weren't going to win headers in the air for us. We would have just given possession away cheaply and be under pressure. 

Exactly , if he wanted to utilise long balls he could have subbed mount for giroud early in the 2nd , but then again vestergard is 6ft 6 so I'm not sure what giroud would have won

[Jase 43,479]

13 minutes ago, lucio said:

Exactly , if he wanted to utilise long balls he could have subbed mount for giroud early in the 2nd , but then again vestergard is 6ft 6 so I'm not sure what giroud would have won

Giroud would have done better to win aerial duels compared to any of the front 4 attacking players on Saturday.

[King Kante 1,301]

9 hours ago, Jason said:

LOL

This has p*ssed me off even more. If this was his instruction why the feck did he not bring on Giroud, who is, you know, our best CF at holding up the ball. 

[King Kante 1,301]

1 hour ago, Mana said:

 

If Walcott found the net then...trust me, I will be raging in bits here. 3-3's really BAD enough, but losing 3-4 at home? After spending £200 million? 

Feck Kepa, Zouma and Andreas (and someone I won't mention). We lost 2 points today that we should have gotten.

No, we shouldn't feel "better" that Spuds did the same thing. Focus on our own team and our F ups. Piss poor. Disappointment after disappointment every time.

Get your act together against United. We HAVE to beat United, no excuses.

I do not really see why AC is getting any heat here. Sure, he hasn't been great but on Saturday he played ok, none of the goals where on him and he actually won most of his duals. Reason for the goals where due to structural issues with the set up and individual mistakes from Harvetz, Zouma and Kepa. 

[cosmicway 1,260]

13 hours ago, NikkiCFC said:

I am sick of people pointing out to individual mistakes.

We know what many said about Alonso after WBA game and even Lamps seems done with him after that but that missplaced pass after header for WBA first goal was something that 3 or 4 players could cover easily later. No one did.

And Kepa did not even play and we conceded 3. Next game he was dropped Emerson did mistake for Spurs goal. Zouma, Chris, Havertz, Silva, Kante, Kepa, Mount, Kova, Azpi, James all had mistakes that lead to conceding goals in just last 3 months.

Our system does not work defensively. Pep won 100 points with Stones, Otamendi, Delph as starters because he knew how to cover their flaws. Napoli also did not suffer because of Jorginho in defense.

Great managers know how to fix weak links, Frank is not one of them. Even if that mistake is 100% of Kepa for their 2nd goal he is not the reason why we lost points. Game did not finished 3:1 it was 3:3. People just need that perfect victim it is either Kepa or Alonso or someone else...

At the moment those two should not even be backups but we have much bigger issues here.

What you say is in a sense true because they had some more shots from the edge of the box that could have found the target.
I explained Kepa's flaw though. He 's not so much of a ball dropsie but he is not using his legs.
Then the defense we have do this thing too: They don't play safety, they are too anxious to see the ball pushed forward even when the scoreline does not dictate such necessity.
Those are two regular mistakes I have spotted, plus Christensen-Alonso-Zouma being somewhat below the level of the club.
Also it's all about running. You know why we were better than PAOK Salonika ? It's not because we have such superior ball skills. It was because we ran like an express and they were barges.
Against Bayern Munich, it was different. We were the barge, they were the express train.

[ZAPHOD2319 3,880]

On 10/17/2020 at 5:19 PM, Jason said:

And they came back to win 4-1. Still "little easier" to swallow?

Seeing how they are in 14th...yes. I have two good friends that are Manu and Arsenal fans, so I get pleasure from following Chelsea through good and bad, and watching bad things happen to ManU and Arsenal.

[Jase 43,479]

18 minutes ago, ZAPHOD2319 said:

Seeing how they are in 14th...yes. I have two good friends that are Manu and Arsenal fans, so I get pleasure from following Chelsea through good and bad, and watching bad things happen to ManU and Arsenal.

They may be in 14th but they are only 2 points behind us, with a game in hand. And if we lose to them this weekend, we'll be behind this (supposedly) shit United side...

[Tomo 21,681]

3 hours ago, King Kante said:

I do not really see why AC is getting any heat here. Sure, he hasn't been great but on Saturday he played ok, none of the goals where on him and he actually won most of his duals. Reason for the goals where due to structural issues with the set up and individual mistakes from Harvetz, Zouma and Kepa. 

Agree it's getting ridiculous now. Against WBA he was our only defender who didn't make a fuck up leading to a goal and he was the one getting the most stick. Infact he was probably the reason it wasn't worse before we started the comeback, he made a couple of very crucial interceptions.

Saturday it was Zouma who fucked up and he's getting the most stick.

I don't think I've ever seen such a ridiculous amount of critisising just because.

[ZAPHOD2319 3,880]

27 minutes ago, Jason said:

They may be in 14th but they are only 2 points behind us, with a game in hand. And if we lose to them this weekend, we'll be behind this (supposedly) shit United side...

I think they are weak in depth, but they have talent in their starters. They have several that are underperforming, I think that can be said for every team.