Carvalho? Steady on everyone!

Very good again last night. Seems to keep growing in the back three. Finally looks like he's hitting the potential he showed three seasons ago.

I think @ForeverCarefree raises a good point though - what happens if we revert to a back four? Will all the players who have come to the fore under Tuchel (Christensen, Jorginho, Kovačić, Alonso, etc.) be able to maintain their form or will they go back to consistently looking vulnerable like they always have when we've played a formation with four at the back?

37 minutes ago, PloKoon13 said:

Carvalho? Steady on everyone!

Very good again last night. Seems to keep growing in the back three. Finally looks like he's hitting the potential he showed three seasons ago.

I think @ForeverCarefree raises a good point though - what happens if we revert to a back four? Will all the players who have come to the fore under Tuchel (Christensen, Jorginho, Kovačić, Alonso, etc.) be able to maintain their form or will they go back to consistently looking vulnerable like they always have when we've played a formation with four at the back?

Hard to know, but best guess - this is definitely not the only factor, as he’s playing better than ever regardless of formation. Age is a huge factor. He’s having a growth spurt of sorts - this often isn’t linear. It suddenly clicks. He’s very young still for a CB, and we tend not make nearly enough of an allowance for age. Also, I could be wrong and don’t mean you but I don’t recall this “what happens in a back 4” qualification being used so much in reverse back when everyone was laying into him. It was just “Christensen again!”... “Not good enough for us” ...”just get rid of him!”, it wasn’t -  “not good enough but maybe if we reverted to a back 3 he’d be great.”

1 hour ago, PloKoon13 said:

Carvalho? Steady on everyone!

Very good again last night. Seems to keep growing in the back three. Finally looks like he's hitting the potential he showed three seasons ago.

I think @ForeverCarefree raises a good point though - what happens if we revert to a back four? Will all the players who have come to the fore under Tuchel (Christensen, Jorginho, Kovačić, Alonso, etc.) be able to maintain their form or will they go back to consistently looking vulnerable like they always have when we've played a formation with four at the back?

This also leads to a follow-up question: If all of our vulnerable players are looking world-class in this system, why on earth would we be eager to revert to back 4?

3 minutes ago, Luiz4Chelsea said:

This also leads to a follow-up question: If all of our vulnerable players are looking world-class in this system, why on earth would we be eager to revert to back 4?

Its a decent question. Thinking about it I think even under Frank we almost did better in a three. 

For me it's about flexibility. Teams will eventually work out the three same as they did under Conte. Question at that point is whether we have the right combos to move to a 4 when needed depending on the opposition. Challenge for Sarri (and Frank this season) was we became a bit one note and reliant on certain personnel. 

I also think we've spent loads of cash in the last two seasons on Havertz, Werner, Ziyech, Pulisic and Chilwell. There are questions about whether it works best to have those players on the pitch. I'm thinking Pulisic in particular who seems to be an out an out wide man which doesn't really fit with the wingbacks. 

1 hour ago, PloKoon13 said:

Carvalho? Steady on everyone!

Very good again last night. Seems to keep growing in the back three. Finally looks like he's hitting the potential he showed three seasons ago.

I think @ForeverCarefree raises a good point though - what happens if we revert to a back four? Will all the players who have come to the fore under Tuchel (Christensen, Jorginho, Kovačić, Alonso, etc.) be able to maintain their form or will they go back to consistently looking vulnerable like they always have when we've played a formation with four at the back?

I wannst claiming he is as good as Carvalho, just the style he played reminded me of him. The way he took the ball of the attacker one on one in particular.

2 minutes ago, Spiller86 said:

Its a decent question. Thinking about it I think even under Frank we almost did better in a three. 

For me it's about flexibility. Teams will eventually work out the three same as they did under Conte. Question at that point is whether we have the right combos to move to a 4 when needed depending on the opposition. Challenge for Sarri (and Frank this season) was we became a bit one note and reliant on certain personnel. 

I also think we've spent loads of cash in the last two seasons on Havertz, Werner, Ziyech, Pulisic and Chilwell. There are questions about whether it works best to have those players on the pitch. I'm thinking Pulisic in particular who seems to be an out an out wide man which doesn't really fit with the wingbacks. 

I agree about flexibility, achieving that will be the next big challenge. I'm not sure if that requires a switch back to back 4 though. Tuchel was asked about back 3/ back 4 in an interview recently and said he doesn't think it's so relevant, what it comes down to is the players' roles on the pitch. Think about how differently we were set up against Liverpool, I'd argue we already proved some flexibility there.

With the possible emergence of CHO as right wing back I also don't think we could necessarily deploy more of our attacking personnel with a back 4. I'd like to sea Mason in the middle, I'd like to see Werner paired with Havertz and I'd see 2 of our 3 great wingers Pulisic/Ziyech/CHO. However the laws of maths dictate that fielding all these players will only leave space for one conventional CM, regardless of whether we play back 3 or back 4. Check out the same personnel twice:

 

----------Werner--Havertz----------

Pulisic---------Mount----------CHO

--------------Jorginho--------------

Chilwell--Rüdiger--Christensen-Azpi

 

----------Werner--Havertz----------

Chilwell--Pulisic-----Mount-----CHO

--------------Jorginho---------------

---Rüdiger--Christensen----Azpi-----

 

I'm generally not sold on playing just one CM, but I'd actually feel more confident with that second line-up. Also I'd argue Hazard/Willian/Pedro managed to interpret their roles as wingers in front of wing backs quite well, I'm sure it would be easy for Tommy Tactics

33 minutes ago, Luiz4Chelsea said:

This also leads to a follow-up question: If all of our vulnerable players are looking world-class in this system, why on earth would we be eager to revert to back 4?

Mainly because the current formation is restricting the use of most of the players we have invested so heavily in over the past couple of years. 

Effectively there are only 3 players in the current system who are outright attacking players, on a couple of occassions Hudson-Odoi playing as the right wing-back has been the fourth. 

But from the current squad you've got Abraham, Giroud, Werner, Ziyech, Havertz, Pulisic, Mount, Hudson-Odoi contesting for a place in the front 3.

Basically it's not sustainable for the make up of our squad to be playing 3-4-3 going into next season. 

The summer recruitment was geared towards creating a more attacking team, if you persist with 3-4-3 it makes that recruitment drive almost null and void and you're back to looking to at recruiting again but this time for whole different system. 

1 minute ago, ForeverCarefree said:

Mainly because the current formation is restricting the use of most of the players we have invested so heavily in over the past couple of years. 

Effectively there are only 3 players in the current system who are outright attacking players, on a couple of occassions Hudson-Odoi playing as the right wing-back has been the fourth. 

But from the current squad you've got Abraham, Giroud, Werner, Ziyech, Havertz, Pulisic, Mount, Hudson-Odoi contesting for a place in the front 3.

I wouldn't change the system for the sake of getting more new signings on the pitch. Competition is good and the best players will rise to the occasion and claim their spot.

And I don't agree that it will make the summer recruitment null and void. Ziyech is perhaps the only attacking signing that may be in a spot of bother but Havertz and Werner should both have a future in 3-4-2-1.

 

 

4 minutes ago, ForeverCarefree said:

Mainly because the current formation is restricting the use of most of the players we have invested so heavily in over the past couple of years. 

Effectively there are only 3 players in the current system who are outright attacking players, on a couple of occassions Hudson-Odoi playing as the right wing-back has been the fourth. 

But from the current squad you've got Abraham, Giroud, Werner, Ziyech, Havertz, Pulisic, Mount, Hudson-Odoi contesting for a place in the front 3.

Basically it's not sustainable for the make up of our squad to be playing 3-4-3 going into next season. 

The summer recruitment was geared towards creating a more attacking team, if you persist with 3-4-3 it makes that recruitment drive almost null and void and you're back to looking to at recruiting again but this time for whole different system. 

Yeah that's exactly my question, how do you manage to put that fifth attacking player in a back 4 formation? Without us looking crazy vulnerable? In a way that couldn't also be achieved with a back 3?

And on recruiting I'd argue the exact opposite. Right now we have an abundance of players striving with a back 3. Switch back to back 4 and suddenly the world-class performers Christensen, Jorginho etc. lose their grip and need to be replaced by Rice + Gimenez or whoever for 150m pounds. Add to that the fact that our transfer forum seems to be mainly bothered about buying Haaland and Sancho and suddenly this reported 260m pounds summer budget seems to be totally inadequate.

4 minutes ago, Sindre said:

I wouldn't change the system for the sake of getting more new signings on the pitch. Competition is good and the best players will rise to the occasion and claim their spot.

And I don't agree that it will make the summer recruitment null and void. Ziyech is perhaps the only attacking signing that may be in a spot of bother but Havertz and Werner should both have a future in 3-4-2-1.

There's no way Pulsic is goig to be content with getting 10/15 minutes off the bench every other game. 

In the current season with games coming thick and fast it makes sense to have heavy rotation. In a normal season you'd expect to see a much more settled starting XI from game to game. 

It's not about changing formation for the sake of picking certain players but by not playing a formation that accomodates your most recent signings it makes the clubs recruitment stratergy look poor. There needs to be a club driven stratergy for recruitment because we change managers so frequently. 

As things stand we find ourselves top heavy with attacking players. But we've spent over £200m on those players in the last couple of years. 

5 minutes ago, Luiz4Chelsea said:

Yeah that's exactly my question, how do you manage to put that fifth attacking player in a back 4 formation? Without us looking crazy vulnerable? In a way that couldn't also be achieved with a back 3?

A formation like 4-2-3-1 (or a variation of) you have 4 predominantly attacking players in the starting line up, as apposed to the 3 in the current formation. 

The back 3 is geared towards typically having 5 of the 10 outfield players being defensive in nature. 

The point I'm making is that we keep changing our recruitment stratergy on whims of our managerial appointments but because we keep changing managers frequently you're left with an balanced squad. 

30 minutes ago, ForeverCarefree said:

The summer recruitment was geared towards creating a more attacking team, if you persist with 3-4-3 it makes that recruitment drive almost null and void and you're back to looking to at recruiting again but this time for whole different system. 

Pretty much the story of Chelsea since about 2012!

I think the key thing is that the football we're playing isn't the easiest on the eye and when you spend so much money on attacking players only to have three on the pitch then that is probably not going to change or be sustainable. But it's Roman so who knows? I'm honestly not sure the money or the opportunity cost of our approach really bother him.

28 minutes ago, ForeverCarefree said:

A formation like 4-2-3-1 (or a variation of) you have 4 predominantly attacking players in the starting line up, as apposed to the 3 in the current formation. 

The back 3 is geared towards typically having 5 of the 10 outfield players being defensive in nature. 

The point I'm making is that we keep changing our recruitment stratergy on whims of our managerial appointments but because we keep changing managers frequently you're left with an balanced squad. 

---------Havertz---------

Werner--Mount-----CHO

----Kovacic--Jorginho---

Chilly-Rüdiger-AC4-Azpi

=

------Werner--Havertz------

----------Mount------------

Chilly-Kovacic-Jorginho-CHO

---Rüdiger--AC4----Azpi----

 

I really don't get this argument about deploying more attacking personnel.

Let's not forget that the formation is just a way to write names on a board, it doesn't necessarily dictate the actual shape of the team in-game. Man City play a back 4 and nonetheless they usually play the same 3-2-5 in possession that we do

 

Sterling-De Bruyne-Jesus-Gündogan-Mahrez

--------------Rodri------Cancelo-------------

-------Zinchenko---Dias-------Stones--------

 

Alonso-CHO-Havertz-Werner-James

---------Kovacic----Jorginho--------

----Zouma---Christensen---Azpi----

Edited March 9, 20215 yr by Luiz4Chelsea

6 minutes ago, Luiz4Chelsea said:

 

Alonso-CHO-Havertz-Werner-James

---------Kovacic----Jorginho--------

----Zouma----Jorginho---Azpi------

I know you love him Luiz, but two Jorginhos! Surely not?

Edited March 9, 20215 yr by just

Look, I definitely can see us shift to a back 4 next season and I wouldn't be opposed to it at all. I just disagree with it being such a "law of nature", as it's often depicted on here.

It just seems like a marginalisation of the team's current performances. Too often I read stuff like "I think Tuchel found the perfect makeshift system; this is a great way to get results now, before there's more time in the summer to take the necessary shift to back 4 in order to properly compete."

Come on, give the team some credit! Do they look like a makeshift team right now? We seem to be up to absolutely every challenge presented to us! Heck, we just beat Atletico Madrid 1-0 "away", how many teams manage to do that? How on earth is that not competing? And Tuchel hasn't even had much time to refine this system yet.

Yes, pre season will be a gift because Tuchel will finally have some undisturbed time to work on his ideas. And maybe that will lead him to a back 4, maybe he'll stick with the back 3. Either way he'll build on the team's current great performances

When a defender with the obvious intelligence and ability AC has is doesn't perform well, the formation cannot be the sole culprit. 

Possible reasons he hasn't been as good as he is now for some time:

- Lack of confidence.

- Coaching. Who knows if Lampard coached him to his strengths and inspired confidence? 

- Other players. He played a lot with Kepa and was dropped when Mendy came. Then ppl said the initial stabilising in defence was because of Zouma, when in reality any of our defenders would probably thrived in front of the new keeper. 

- Perception. As others have pointed out, he has had quite a few good performances in a back 4. But the occasional error, his apparent lack of 'grit', last ditch tackles and inner fire are noticed much more than the sublime subtleties of his game. There is so much confirmation bias and negative halo effect it's unbelievable.

So, of course he can play well in a back 4, even though his biggest strength are more noticbale in a back 3. 

7 minutes ago, Luiz4Chelsea said:

Look, I definitely can see us shift to a back 4 next season and I wouldn't be opposed to it at all. I just disagree with it being such a "law of nature", as it's often depicted on here.

It just seems like a marginalisation of the team's current performances.

That's not the intent of what I'm saying. 

As a system I quite like 3-4-3. As long as you have players suited to the wing-back role (which I think is the hardest position to fill in that system) I like how it can easily switch from an attacking to a defensive system. 

But my point is more that our recent recruitment isn't geared towards playing 3-4-3. So either we move on a couple of the current attackers, potentially at a loss, so soon after buying them to persist with 3-4-3 or Tuchel will eventually have to shift to a system (even occassionally) that will better utilise the area of the squad we have the most depth in. 

Christensen is good at back 3, he's been good at back 4 in handful of games for us. 

Thinking about making him captain is ridiculous. He is not vocal nor a type of person people rely on. 

He is a very gifted footballer. That he is. In the highest level of football he is very good in our setup where he is sandwiched between Azpi and Rudiger or Zouma. 

When we switch the system to back 4 by either Tuchel or his successor Christensen is not playing for us winning football. That is the level he operates currently at least. 

4 minutes ago, ForeverCarefree said:

That's not the intent of what I'm saying. 

As a system I quite like 3-4-3. As long as you have players suited to the wing-back role (which I think is the hardest position to fill in that system) I like how it can easily switch from an attacking to a defensive system. 

But my point is more that our recent recruitment isn't geared towards playing 3-4-3. So either we move on a couple of the current attackers, potentially at a loss, so soon after buying them to persist with 3-4-3 or Tuchel will eventually have to shift to a system (even occassionally) that will better utilise the area of the squad we have the most depth in. 

4-2-3-1 or 3-4-3: We have 8 attacking players (Mount, Ziyech, Pulisic, CHO, Werner, Havertz, Giroud and Abrahm) fighting for 4 positions. Yes, the RWB within 3-4-3 is only suited to CHO out of these players, so maybe it's actually 3.5 positions. But that marginal difference certainly doesn't make 3-4-3 incompatible with our recent recruitment.

Our seasons are long and draining so we need depth and competition. Is there a place for Ziyech in a 3-4-3? 100%, if he palys well. Is there a place for Pulisic in a 3-4-3? 100% if he plays well.

In fact, switch back to a system that requires 2 natural wingers each game and suddenly people realise again that we only have 3 of those, one of which is very injury prone, and that we need to buy at least one more next summer. So I simply don't see why playing a 3-4-1-2/3-4-2-1 would force us to sell lots of attackers. I can only see it happen if Ziyech or Pulisic give in to frustration and blame the formation for their lack of playing time. But in that case we'd be better of without them. And we'd actually have to replace them

1 hour ago, ForeverCarefree said:

Mainly because the current formation is restricting the use of most of the players we have invested so heavily in over the past couple of years. 

Effectively there are only 3 players in the current system who are outright attacking players, on a couple of occassions Hudson-Odoi playing as the right wing-back has been the fourth. 

But from the current squad you've got Abraham, Giroud, Werner, Ziyech, Havertz, Pulisic, Mount, Hudson-Odoi contesting for a place in the front 3.

Basically it's not sustainable for the make up of our squad to be playing 3-4-3 going into next season. 

The summer recruitment was geared towards creating a more attacking team, if you persist with 3-4-3 it makes that recruitment drive almost null and void and you're back to looking to at recruiting again but this time for whole different system. 

Pretty certain he won’t be using 3-4-3 next season, he has been tasked by Marina to achieve top 4 and the easiest route to that is a 3-4-3. Fully expect us to switch to a back 4 next season, with a few key additions.

To achieve top 4 he needs to win games, so that's not much different if you want to challenge for the title.

If the squad further improves and develops into his idea within the current system and its variants I see little point in throwing all that over board next season because the task will be the very same: win games. as many as possible

8 minutes ago, ducavis said:

Pretty certain he won’t be using 3-4-3 next season, he has been tasked by Marina to achieve top 4 and the easiest route to that is a 3-4-3. Fully expect us to switch to a back 4 next season, with a few key additions.

True, because making top 4 requires us to win as many games as possible, whereas the directive for next season will obviously be completely different...

4 minutes ago, ducavis said:

Pretty certain he won’t be using 3-4-3 next season, he has been tasked by Marina to achieve top 4 and the easiest route to that is a 3-4-3. Fully expect us to switch to a back 4 next season, with a few key additions.

I don’t quite follow the logic here and elsewhere. If 3-4-3 is the best way to achieving top 4, why would we abandon it? Is it about more goals, more attractive football or something? If so I don’t get that either. What is unattractive about the football we are playing now? Are people sure we were playing more attractive football with a back 4 under, for example, Jose? We weren’t known for it. We were all about pragmatism and the score lines were very similar to what we are seeing now. I would argue the football is more attractive now than then.

Tuchel said that the formation itself doesn't really matter as long as we play well as a team.

I think that every top team (part from Conte's team) plays with a back 4 formation, Juventus now plays with an interesting 4-4-2 formation which I think we could be playing as well if we get a new top CB (not sure who would that be though).

Christensen has been doing a great job, I haven't been convinced that he can be this good at all so he proved me wrong already. I thought that he did a decent job under Conte only because he was protected by the defensive tactic but now under Tuchel's back 3 he looks good as well and he's so comfortable with the ball.

IMO Christensen struggles more in a back 4 formation (maybe Rudiger as well)  so I doubt that Tuchel will change the formation this season but if we get a new CB for next season we might see a change.
Even if our defense has been good we should be looking to further improve since T.Silva will be leaving so we should sign a new CB for next season though some would say that we should be looking for a new striker instead...

It all depends on where Tuchel wants to further improve but I think that with Werner, Tammy and Havertz we have good attacking options already even if so far it hasn't been as productive as we would have hoped for - you can make the same argument about our defense, it has been working so well so why change anything at all? Maybe for no other reason but to keep things fresh and to deny the opposition the chance to adapt to our way of play?

If we keep playing so well it will be hard to let go of this formation and then it will be scary if we look worse after the change but we should trust the whole process and hopefully it works, our goal is to challenge for the title so as long as we find a way to do it, it will be a good thing no matter what formation we play.

17 hours ago, PloKoon13 said:

Carvalho? Steady on everyone!

Very good again last night. Seems to keep growing in the back three. Finally looks like he's hitting the potential he showed three seasons ago.

I think @ForeverCarefree raises a good point though - what happens if we revert to a back four? Will all the players who have come to the fore under Tuchel (Christensen, Jorginho, Kovačić, Alonso, etc.) be able to maintain their form or will they go back to consistently looking vulnerable like they always have when we've played a formation with four at the back?

I'm not sure Christensen being good or not is solely dependent on a back three if we look at things a little deeper.

When he lost the plot under Conte he was playing in a back three, a combination of his age and Conte acting like a d**khead meant he found that period a mental struggle.

Then under Sarri he had one massive shocker at Anfield but was largely decent when called upon that season in a back 4.

Last season he wasn't great but Kepa tax.