Good post.We were lucky against Liverpool and Man City was under-resourced in the first game of the season (most of their players were drained).
Chelsea won 4 of 4 against us because their style particularly suits playing against us.
They don't play a high-line so we have less chance to counter (which is the only style we excel at currently).
They have really good CMs, which also happens to be our weakest area on the pitch, so they are going to have lots of posession and can play through us. They also happen to mainly play centrally.
Their main weakness is in the full-backs and in center forward.
If we had a good right-back we could exploit Alonso (who lacks the legs to track back, but is technically really good so suits playing forward). This is shown when Bergwin looked threatening in the 1st half, and the way Alonso 'slipped' for our dis-allowed goal. However our RB was Doherty who lacks the quality to consistently attack.
Lukaku is also low in confidence, which is why Sanchez coped well yday.
Overall I disagree that it's anything to do with mentality (that we lose consistently to them). For me it's a combination of personnel and tactics.
Some of you may find this article an interesting read, regarding how Conte tweaked the formation and lineup during his title winning season at Chelsea.
Relatively average but functional players were selected over more creative (and higher paid) players like Fabregas, Oscar and Willian. This is one of the main reasons that the idea of bringing in Traore to play RWB doesn't scare me - assuming all the ITK and runours are true about Conte wanting him. It's also why I'm content with Hojbjerg, Skipp and Winks as our main CM options (all very functional players), with rumours suggesting our more creative CMs are planned to be replaced by less creative but more functional players. Kessie seems like a much better fit for Conte than Dele and Ndombele. Only time will tell whether Sarr (signed under Nuno, then loaned straight back) is a player Conte wants.
I think too much stick is given when 'we relax and defend a lead'. 9/10 this is the best route to winning games if you are up. This is especially the case for a team like ours, where we mainly score from transitions and rely on 2 star players. The odds are better if we play to our strength (low block + counter-attack) as opposed to changing it.I agree with most apart from mentality. Too often (not just against Chelsea) I see us score a goal then relax and defend it. Other teams like the Manchester ones keep looking for more goals. This match though came down to lack of depth leaving us unable to play the managers preferred style or switch things up to foil the way Chelsea play.
Whilst I will agree with the personnel and tactics point, I will disagree with it not being anything to do with mentality seeing as though (to me anyway) in each of those 4 games we have seemingly given up the game once they got their first goal. It's easy to say that they have a great bench so what can we do about that, but then that is us having the same mentality of hiding when the going gets tough. Where's the resilience gone from the mid-Poch seasons?
Also, lucky against Liverpool? Behave. They were lucky we decided we couldn't finish in that game.
The Chelsea central midfield is under-rated. It lacks goals/assists, so it doesn't grab attention, but it excels at ball-winning, positional awareness and moving forwards. They hardly lose the ball (Jorgino did recently but its not common), and almost always pushes the countering side to the flanks (a key part of their defensive strategy).Good post.
Chelsea have the lions share of the ball against most teams (except City, Liverpool and maybe Brighton) but the one thing they consistently struggle to do most weeks is put the ball in the back of the net.
Over the past 3 games we've given them 3 freebies due to silly errors, they've scored 1 worldie and one set piece goal. Any chances they actually created for themselves from open play they managed to screw up - it was largely the goals we gifted them that made the difference.
Against a team like Chelsea whose style really suits playing against us, the absolute last thing you can afford to do is give away cheap goals like we did.
...or have a ref disallowing perfectly valid goals.
Chelsea's players also are going to "get up" for a game against Spurs where they probably don't care as much about Brighton, Wolves, Everton, and West Ham.Brighton, Wolves, Everton and West Ham seem to have coped with starting 11’s infinitely inferior to Chelsea. We are better than those teams but again meekly succumb to Chelsea. Nothing wrong with suggesting Conte might not have set team up well and hardly crazy hogwash, Conte has been brilliant for us but today wasn’t his finest.
Would like to see our players "get up" for a game against Chelsea.Chelsea's players also are going to "get up" for a game against Spurs where they probably don't care as much about Brighton, Wolves, Everton, and West Ham.
Conte's not the Pope you know. He's a brilliant manager but he can also be fallible and people can call him out if they think he got it wrong.
Personally, I think he spooked himself when he went on about how much better they are than us after the first leg and subsequently went overly negative in the two games since.
The squad needs improving but worse teams than us have troubled Chelsea recently.
He's a great manager but it's fair to think he was culpable yesterday. Insisting he can never be wrong is veering towards Mourinhoista territory and you don't want that
Great post.We were lucky against Liverpool and Man City was under-resourced in the first game of the season (most of their players were drained).
Chelsea won 4 of 4 against us because their style particularly suits playing against us.
They don't play a high-line so we have less chance to counter (which is the only style we excel at currently).
They have really good CMs, which also happens to be our weakest area on the pitch, so they are going to have lots of posession and can play through us. They also happen to mainly play centrally.
Their main weakness is in the full-backs and in center forward.
If we had a good right-back we could exploit Alonso (who lacks the legs to track back, but is technically really good so suits playing forward). This is shown when Bergwin looked threatening in the 1st half, and the way Alonso 'slipped' for our dis-allowed goal. However our RB was Doherty who lacks the quality to consistently attack.
Lukaku is also low in confidence, which is why Sanchez coped well yday.
Overall I disagree that it's anything to do with mentality (that we lose consistently to them). For me it's a combination of personnel and tactics.
It’s the confidence of the posters calling him out that cracks me up.Conte's not the Pope you know. He's a brilliant manager but he can also be fallible and people can call him out if they think he got it wrong.
So what was your mate doing there?interesting tidbit of info from a Sky Sports interview with Antonio last week via a mate who was there -- Antonio spent much of the interview complaining about not having any signings yet and not having any money to spend. THFC then saw the cut of the interview and demanded Sky edit all that stuff out of the broadcast version.