Chelsea 2-1 Newcastle United, Premier League: Tactical Analysis
Today at 12:50 AM
Old King Cole was a merry old soul and a merry old soul was he
Once again, Enzo Maresca had some surprises in the starting XI, including dropping Jadon Sancho for Pedro Neto, allowing Roméo Lavia to keep his starting spot over vice-captain Enzo Fernández (that stat does not make Enzo look good), and putting Reece James on the left side of the back line. The latter was certainly so that the area of the pitch James had to cover was managed and so that Malo Gusto could invert on the right and, as Maresca himself stated, so that James, Palmer, and Neto could link up on the left. The other change would then be that Palmer was more often occupying the left half-space rather than the right, where he has found so much success. Turns out it doesn't matter where you deploy him, he will eat defenses alive. Because of those changes, the lineup had an average age of 23 years and 89 days, one of our youngest starting XIs ever - but not entirely surprising considering both how young this squad is in general and justified by both the form of those brought in and the result of the match. Chelsea continue to have a younger squad than anyone else in the league this season, besting second place Brentford by over a half of a year.
For Newcastle (the third eldest squad), while Anthony Gordon missed due to injury (thank goodness considering his propensity to do damage against Chelsea), both of their wingers in Miguel Almirón and Harvey Barnes were back in the lineup after missing recent matches. And of course, their fullbacks are both former Cobham graduates and, as always seems to happen against us, played a role in the goal they scored.
Another thing that Maresca outright stated in in post-match press conference was that he was continually telling his players to slow the play down because the quick transitional play did not suit us and is not his preferred style. While the second part may be true, when the quick transitions from long balls end up in the back of their net and the slow and deliberate play out from the back nearly cost us, we have to question whether his philosophy entirely suits this squad. Telling Robert Sánchez to play out from the back is all well and good, but if he is incapable of doing so successfully, it seems like we are shooting ourselves in the foot. And not only that, but getting Palmer on the ball in deeper spaces, with his vision and precision, not to mention the speed that the front line possesses, we are bound to break through some defenses that hold even a remotely high line.
When the opposition employs a man-to-man marking style of pressing with a relatively high PPDA (8.5) and we are forced to utilise Sánchez as a passing option to help build out from the back, mistakes are bound to be made. It is telling that we had 8 high turnovers this game and as a result they had 14 deep entries while 75% of the game was played in either the middle or their defensive third is a damning stat - especially noting that we only had 11 deep entries with all that positional dominance and once again lost the xG battle (1.68 to 1.85 according to Opta.) And this is certainly what caused Maresca's disappointment at our 'basketball-style' approach to this match, not to mention our much lower than normal passing accuracy - just 82% - after average in the mid to high 80's so far this season. Even in our pass map below, the length between passes is noticeably farther and, according to FBRef, we attempted 62 long passes but only completed 34 of them for 54.8% accuracy. While Sánchez himself was a huge culprit of this (7/26), neither Reece James (6/15) nor Cole Palmer (6/13) were great with their lengthier distribution.
There was also a clear instruction to our wingers to pass in a less usual manner to what they typically do - and our 13 open play crosses were that. This is because they were largely finding space way out wide to get on the ball, and quite often Noni Madueke and Pedro Neto could both be found with their heels on the touchline while we were in possession and transitioning out of the back. If this is going to be an emphasis moving forward, it seems likely that low crosses will be a much better method of delivery. I don't know if there is a site that lists players' average height, but I can assure you that Chelsea are not among the tallest in the Premier League, not to mention how few headers we have scored comparably speaking.
We are unbeaten in their last 8 league games while tied at half (winning 6 and drawing 2), and have a record going back to 2012 of not losing at Stamford Bridge to Newcastle. Combine that with how competently we have been playing lately and that Newcastle were already winless in their last 4 matches allowed an optimistic feeling to accompany this game up and until its very end - even when Reece James nearly scored an own goal in the dying moments. While that was just nearly horrific, the decision to overturn this penalty, when Dan Burn clearly impedes Christopher Nkunku from getting to his cutback, especially because in the replay below you can see that Nkunku surely would have gotten there before Livramento, is entirely horrific officiating.
Regardless, I expect another riveting display midweek in the Carabao Cup, albeit with entirely different (Chelsea) personnel and a similar result.
KTBFFH.
