Why Chelsea Are The Most Unpredictable Team In The Premier League

Chelsea aren't really weird. They can defend but then they can't defend and when they don't defend they really do not defend very well. Then they can't attack sometimes and other times they are absolutely electric. But JP Morgan isn't enough to be a top side in the modern Premier League. What? So what is it with shabby Alonso's Chelsea and how far away are this side from being a top team in England? Well I'm Jacob Orsfall, 442's resident tactician and this is why Chelsea are the most unpredictable side in the Premier League. Now we know Chelsea can be incredible going forward at times. They've scored 10 league goals in the opening fixtures of the Premier League season, ranking them as the second most frequent bagsman in the division at the time of recording. But what I like about this side is that as much as Morgan Rodgers' brilliant ball carrying and Cole Palmer's individual creativity get all the plaudits in this Chelsea side, their attack is a lot more than that. We often see them slightly underloaded in attack due to them averaging 44.5% possession at the time of recording. So movement from Olive Pedro, Palmer and Rodgers is super important. And you see here the ball is played to João Pedro and he occupies four Brighton players, allowing Morgan Rodgers to go from a deep starting position to an area in which he has separation from the nearest defender. And that's what João Pedro has done so so well in these opening games and you saw just how much they missed Pedro against Brentford. They really didn't have that sort of glue in that attack that player who could reliably make it stick. Because the Brazilian will happily step away from that leading role up top to pull players in and give other Chelsea players high value opportunities. I mean despite his side having far less of the ball this season compared to last season, he's still having pretty much the exact same touches of a football. Because he's sort of the centre of how this Chelsea side create opportunities. But it's not just him. This movement in the front line that you can happily see whenever you watch Chelsea seeps into the rest of the Chelsea team. Here Maxence Lacroix is in possession stepping out the back line after Rhys James has dropped in. Ensuring Chelsea still have that 2v2 on the halfway line in their rest defence. But a midfielder dropping in, Rhys James in this case, also creates open space. So Lacroix can carry and play wide. But he doesn't just stop here. He carries his run on as Gusto comes inside, dragging his marker with him and opening up the central area for Koparma to rotate into. And then all of a sudden Chelsea are on this lovely little 4v3 in the centre of the pitch. Which is how Chelsea have scored a lot of their goals this season. Yes, it's really direct. Yes, it's getting up to them front three attackers and just let them do a bit of beautiful magic. But it's also a lot of deep to high runs to make dummy runs, to get Koparma in the pocket, to support players combining one-twos on the edge of the area. And that's been really nice to see. However, as we know with Chelsea, quite a few goals go the other way. Now, this is the problem for me with Chelsea out of possession. Because here, they've actually done pretty well to cover the central options and it's a half-decent press. But there is a lot of risk in having both your midfield players jumping all the way onto the opposition's 18-yard box to press their midfield. And it can work, absolutely. But not when your wing-back is jumping to the opposition's wide player and build-up as the ball is halfway to them. Because that's what Malagusto does here. He doesn't start his jump onto that wide Leeds player until the ball is halfway to him, which gives that Leeds player time to take a touch, set himself, give enough time for other Leeds players to make some little movements and create speeds. And as we see, all he does is wait for one of the Chelsea centre-halves to commit out of that back line. And then you hit the channel to a wide 1v1, which a lot of strikers in the Premier League nowadays love to be in. And Leeds in the match-up absolutely does. And that's the issue, because it's not just like that was a one-off game where Leeds, you know, made the most of getting down the touchline against the Chelsea side, who were a little bit unfortunate. No, you see this every single week where the centre-halves commit out of the back line and then the opposition are through on goal just by going down that one of the left or the right channels. Now, a big reason for that is because when they press and potentially try and go man to man or in the midfield, these midfield players aren't, for me, entirely sure of their roles properly. There's usually a lot of confusion. You watch a Chelsea game, someone throws their hand up and asks what's going on. And because they consistently mistime their jumps as a result of being confused, it has a huge knock-on effect on those behind them who are then mistiming their jumps or are a yard away because that player jumped too early. And it has a huge effect on everyone else in the Chelsea side. Meaning it's not a surprise that when it comes to final third ball wins, they're near the bottom of the table at the time of recording. And it's a common occurrence for this Chelsea side. I mean, a lot of the stuff that you'll notice out of possession is something that's happening in every single game, but sides just happily play around their block and then just hook it down the touchline to a striker or a winger who's stretching that back three that are sat there on the halfway line. And it just leaves so many gaps, so many holes that teams can then play in and enter the final third really easily. Hull City played 74% of their attacks down the flanks when they went to the bridge and Arsenal had 76% of their attacks go out wide when they hosted the Blues. But it isn't just the press that is causing Chelsea a lot of problems this season. As we mentioned earlier, there are huge knock-on effects by their final third pressing, which is leading to some massive issues in deep by defensive states. They often sit in a 5-4-1 in their own half, but their biggest issue is again in those wide areas. Their wingers are zonal, but the problem is their distances seem all wrong. Again, Rodgers being at this 90-degree angle means it will take time to reach Ben White. He's also allowed Hazel to go 1v1 with Saka and he isn't quite deep enough to close the space around Kai Havertz. So that means a Chelsea centre-back steps wide to monitor the German striker, creating a huge disconnect across that back five. Now, another problem is that when this goes wide, Saka can take two touches before Hazel has arrived and set himself to defend, which closes the actual window for him to win the ball and allows Saka to draw other Chelsea players over with small touches. Now, it's hard to properly place your finger on exactly why Chelsea have such big timing and jump issues because it's the basics. I mean, I've watched every Chelsea game so far this season. When I was writing the script, the Brentford game is not entirely part of this script because this is filmed the morning after, but it feels like such basic stuff that they are continuously just messing up entirely, which leads us onto our next issue, but it does allow us to cast more of a positive light on Xabi Alonso and on this Chelsea side, which is what I always want to do. If you watch a lot of the videos, I'm always looking to try and be positive. So, ladies and gentlemen, stick with me. Trust me, we're coming back to some It's really easy to criticise Xabi Alonso's Chelsea. Trust me, it really, really is, but we have to contextualise the problems that they have in order to truly understand how long-term these problems are going to be and how much actually falls on the shoulders of Xabi Alonso. The closest to his best pre-season team Alonso got was the one that met AC Milan. Now, we see featuring this side. In that game, the distances they had to cover when jumping were far smaller, and a lot of that is because of who Neto is pointing at here, Moises Caicedo. If we go forward slightly, we see Caicedo as basically a lone midfield player, which allows for the rest of the team to commit man-to-man and be brave out of possession. Now, in the Premier League, with a Gusto or potentially a Lavia or maybe a Rhys James, none of them have the distance coverage of Moises Caicedo, and that's not a slight on them. Moises Caicedo is just arguably one of the best defensive midfielders in world football, but his ability to cover such big distances allows other Chelsea players to jump earlier, to go and press without any hesitation, because they are so sure that Caicedo will probably bail them out. He will cover that ground to win the ball back. Like this scenario, Neto seems reluctant to leave that 1v1 behind him, so he doesn't jump. If Caicedo was maybe in this position, maybe the peace of mind that he knows Caicedo can cover the ground would encourage him to make that aggressive pressing move. So, bringing Palestra, who was a mainstay in the pre-season team prior to injury, bringing Moises Caicedo with their distance coverage, and maybe we see a bit of a change to the way Chelsea are pressing teams and how effective they are when they do these pressing actions. However, we've got one more problem to look at, and it is this. This is a problem that's plagued Chelsea for god knows how long. They're in a 4v3 here, okay, 4v3 on the Hull attack, Hull City attack. Wesley Fofana is in arguably an ideal position to try and win this first contact, contest the first duel. Now, he's against Olly McBurnie, so if he doesn't win it, that could be a problem, but actually, Chelsea have four players creating a box around the ball, which allows them to be pretty confident that they should be winning this knockdown. But then I want to look out wide and look at Pedro Neto. So, in this game, I believe he was playing off the right wing, but he's obviously dropped back because we're in a set-piece scenario here. Now, Pedro Neto has entirely closed off the idea of tracking back here, because he's looking the other way. His body positioning closes off any idea of him turning and recovering this flick on from Olly McBurnie. So, when it's flicked on, instead of Chelsea being 2v1 toward the byline with Neto and Gusto around Ryan Giles, it's a 1v1, and Gusto is in a leg race with Ryan Giles, who shrugs him off entirely. Now, being in a 1v1 prior to being shrugged off really isn't the end of the world. You kind of trust Gusto to be able to, at the worst, really make it a really horrific cross from Giles or let him force you into giving a corner away. But Gusto obviously gets shrugged off, and it allows Giles to just boot a ball into the box. Now, this is a horrific position for Chelsea to be in, because now, despite being in a 4v3 in their defence versus their attack, and having two support midfielders just in front of the first contact from Olly McBurnie, they're now in a 3v3 inside their own penalty area. That is absolutely shambolic to get into that scenario, and it actually gets worse, because Joel Ahadso, I know he makes a mistake, which we're going to touch on in a second, but he's not in an easy position now, because he's now trying to read a ball that's dropping straight down, which isn't always as easy as you may suspect, especially when you're right under it, and he's got Bouloumi with momentum to come and contest the first duel if he does want to. Now, Bouloumi doesn't even have to do that, because Joel Ahadso makes a mistake, misreads the bounce, it then bounces over him, and now Bouloumi's got a shot on goal, with almost the entire goal gaping for him, in a huge opportunity for Hull City, despite them starting the move in an underloaded attack, 4v3 against Chelsea's defence. And that's where I sympathise with Xabi Alonso, because yes, they've not been great in the press, but I think a lot of the problems that they're having, it comes down to individuals. They've got a semi-decent structure at times, like that Hull goal there was not a bad defensive structure set up by the set-piece team or whoever was involved in it, but it's like brain farts, that's what I'm going to call it, I'm going to put it down, benefit the doubt, brain farts lead to a massive chance for Hull, in a position where Hull should have had zero chance to even get a shot off, or think of a shot. But, and I'm going to get a little bit philosophical on you here, because a manager can have tactics, he can have structure, he can have a system, he can sort of patterns of play into it, but the best tactic a manager can have is the players he has at his disposal. And if your players are making bizarre decisions, then it feels like the tactics you're deploying are bizarre decisions, but sometimes it's not necessarily entirely that. So, I'm going to leave you with a question, can Chelsea actually put together a solid run of form and be pushing in that top four, in the top three, in the top two, or are JP Morgan not quite enough for this Chelsea side to really make a do in it this season? Let me know in the comments below, and we'll be back in the future with some more brilliant analysis, and thank you so much for the support on the recent videos, it really doesn't go unnoticed.