2 hours ago, Sindre said:

Lampard sacrificed our solidity which was Deinos point.

And he definitly couldn't make it work with our current crop of attackers (bar Lukaku) either. We all thought it was a great window back then but when it's come to performances not one of the attackers we have bought have consistently delivered.

Perhaps it will become clear we need a real revamp of our attacking options. Right now it's looking that way but thing can obviously change in an instant. But Tuchel is anyhow just at the very start of his Chelsea chapter and have only signed one player. It will obviously take some time before he's built our attack the way he wants it to be.

 

 

 

I think that it matters how to instruct the team to play. We can't say that Lampard couldn't make it work but that Sarri only made it work because he had Hazard, that argument just doesn't work.

Yes we signed just 1 player but that 1 player had 24 goals and 10 assists and won one of the top 5 leagues prior to coming here, that was a signing for about 100m. I mean if we are really going to play like this do we even need an elite striker or attacker in the future? What's the point of buying top talents if we are going to waste them away? Our best creators so far in the league had been Dave who made more than one goal-creating-action per game and that makes him the only defender in the top 5 when it comes to that kind of action, Kovacic has the highest amount of shot-creating-actions in our squad in total and he's not even close to top 5 in the league at that. Tuchel must get our attackers more involved.

Pretty sure we'd go with 343 against the two teams we will play this week. Against the mighty Malmo, RLC and Kovacic ( or Kante) should be enough to control the midfied, and leave an extra attacker in the final third. Mount has to play, the high press doesnt work without him, his movement and passing in the final third, and it's no coincident we struggled during his absence.

4 hours ago, Gol15 said:

I think that it matters how to instruct the team to play. We can't say that Lampard couldn't make it work but that Sarri only made it work because he had Hazard, that argument just doesn't work.

Yes we signed just 1 player but that 1 player had 24 goals and 10 assists and won one of the top 5 leagues prior to coming here, that was a signing for about 100m. I mean if we are really going to play like this do we even need an elite striker or attacker in the future? What's the point of buying top talents if we are going to waste them away? Our best creators so far in the league had been Dave who made more than one goal-creating-action per game and that makes him the only defender in the top 5 when it comes to that kind of action, Kovacic has the highest amount of shot-creating-actions in our squad in total and he's not even close to top 5 in the league at that. Tuchel must get our attackers more involved.

Thank you! 👏 

8 hours ago, Deino said:

Then we should sack Tuchel and bring in a new manager. Clearly Tuchel won't change his style of play this late in the game. 

Leverkusen were 5th that year and Utd's board are lenient as feck plus Bruno kept them relevant through penalties that season, that was even more unsustainable.

You add this to the fact that our board doesn't give managers time to complete projects. They demand excellence every year or get sacked,  so building a team around Havertz now is too late considering the major overhaul we need to do unless we got brutally spanked a la Conte 2016/17. 

Tell me, how a 433/4231 change now would immediately make our attackers score 10-0 without sacrificing our solidity? Lamps did it and failed, Sarri did it and he got us 3rd with peak Hazard in the team. 

We're not exactly solid at the minute even with the 3/5. The only reason it's not reflecting in the GA column is because we've got the best keeper in the world.

5 hours ago, Gol15 said:

I think that it matters how to instruct the team to play. We can't say that Lampard couldn't make it work but that Sarri only made it work because he had Hazard, that argument just doesn't work.

Yes we signed just 1 player but that 1 player had 24 goals and 10 assists and won one of the top 5 leagues prior to coming here, that was a signing for about 100m. I mean if we are really going to play like this do we even need an elite striker or attacker in the future? What's the point of buying top talents if we are going to waste them away? Our best creators so far in the league had been Dave who made more than one goal-creating-action per game and that makes him the only defender in the top 5 when it comes to that kind of action, Kovacic has the highest amount of shot-creating-actions in our squad in total and he's not even close to top 5 in the league at that. Tuchel must get our attackers more involved.

Our offense under Sarri was horrific, slow, sterile possession until Hazard decide it is time to play football and if we concede first we almost always lose

Edited October 18, 20214 yr by Bob stark

If some of you think going to 4231 solve everything, you just need to watch United. 

If you want to understand what formation truly is, just read thread above

2 hours ago, Bob stark said:

If some of you think going to 4231 solve everything, you just need to watch United. 

I don't think anyone argues that or any formation is a silver bullet but at some point we will need to act someway. The main argument for sticking to back 3/5 is the defensive solidarity but that's not the case this season.

We're getting results at the moment thanks to Edou (could you even imagine if Kepa was in goal Saturday?) but this isn't sustainable. 

3 minutes ago, Argo said:

We're getting results at the moment thanks to Edou (could you even imagine if Kepa was in goal Saturday?) but this isn't sustainable. 

Saturday was also a very makeshift back three. Who's never played together in their life.

So one shouldn't draw too many conclusions from that game. The only other game in which we looked really shaky defensively was in the first half v Villa at home. Which was mostly down to Sauls horror-show in midfield as well. It's generally been very stop-start to begin the season with the ridiculous amount of international breaks and key injuries but all in all we are in good shape defensively in my view.

13 minutes ago, Sindre said:

Saturday was also a very makeshift back three. Who's never played together in their life.

So one shouldn't draw too many conclusions from that game. The only other game in which we looked really shaky defensively was in the first half v Villa at home. Which was mostly down to Sauls horror-show in midfield as well. It's generally been very stop-start to begin the season with the ridiculous amount of international breaks and key injuries but all in all we are in good shape defensively in my view.

I thought we were shaky against City as well especially after their goal (two world class saves by Edou and Silva off the line).

Hopefully your right and this settles down but overperforming the XGA the way we currently are is rarely a good sign.

1 hour ago, Argo said:

I don't think anyone argues that or any formation is a silver bullet but at some point we will need to act someway. The main argument for sticking to back 3/5 is the defensive solidarity but that's not the case this season.

We're getting results at the moment thanks to Edou (could you even imagine if Kepa was in goal Saturday?) but this isn't sustainable. 

343,433 or whatever is more about how do you want to defend. You can pick any of 343,433,4231 and you can attack exactly the same way. 

The key is more how do you want to attack and who do you pick. 343 with Hazard - Costa - Pedro is completely different than 343 with Mount - Lukaku - Havertz

After Lukaku came we have changed the way we played. What has happened is we are conceding way more chances. Not sure if that is cause and effect.

We can only rely on Mendy and a decent defence for so long. We can't continue winning games by a goal, eventually we'll concede a few, lose the game, then have to change the style and potentially get exposed further.

Not sure the answer, but Tuchel is the man to sort it out. We know Roman doesn't wait around if he's not seeing improvement. Tuchel winning the CL gave himself a little extra time, but not a lot. We need to make sure we secure the next round of CL too. 

1 hour ago, evissy said:

After Lukaku came we have changed the way we played. What has happened is we are conceding way more chances. Not sure if that is cause and effect.

I think our defense is better without Lukaku at the same time I don't believe our defense can be as good as last season. 

Last season due to covid ball, pretty much all team played below their optimal level plus without crowd away game was so much easier. 

1 hour ago, enigma said:

We can only rely on Mendy and a decent defence for so long. We can't continue winning games by a goal, eventually we'll concede a few, lose the game, then have to change the style and potentially get exposed further.

Not sure the answer, but Tuchel is the man to sort it out. We know Roman doesn't wait around if he's not seeing improvement. Tuchel winning the CL gave himself a little extra time, but not a lot. We need to make sure we secure the next round of CL too. 

We are top of the league 

Tbh I still maintain that until we see a fully fit squad we won't know the true potential of this system. For us to truly be able to score goals in a back 3 system we need our best players on the pitch which seems obvious but, it's also about where they are playing also. 

Personally I don't like when Azpil plays wb I think it defeats the purpose of the way Tuchel first introduced the system. Unless the wingbacks are 2 of Alonso, Chillwell or James I don't want us to ever have 5 dedicated defenders on at the same time. It doesn't matter what team we're playing against I don't want to see it it's too negative. 

Alonso plus 4 other defenders in a back 3 system means at least one of the 5 defenders will actually be a difference maker in attack same with James and Chillwell.

Azpilicueta for all his ability is not an attacking wingback he can attack the box he can make assists and occasionally score goals but, he's not athletic enough at his age to truly cause the kinds of problems we want our wingbacks to cause. He's so much better at rcb where he can do everything he does at wingback anyway. 

Had Pulisic not been injured we would have seen him in at least two different positions, one of the forwards and at wingback. Now when you have a player with the pace, finishing, creativity and dribbling of Christian in wingback you truly see the way Tuchel wants to play a 3atb. CHO when he's really at it shows this, while he may look better like Christian as a fwd, by playing him at wingback that still allows us to play 4 attacking players at once whilst maintaining 3atb. 

For this system to work the wingbacks need to get high and wide and we don't always see that when certain players play. Because of the lack of creativity we have in midfield it's essential we play 4 attackers vs the lower table teams who like to park the bus.

We have without a doubt in my mind the best squad in the world, reflected by the fact we won the ucl. That doesn't mean we have the best team I'm the world that is a different matter entirely. In fact as things stand we don't even have a best team or starting 11. That's not always a bad thing since it makes us less predictable but, also causes issues for players trying to establish form. Some players need a good string of games to really hit their form or top level, under Tuchel very few players really play every game.

Mendy, Rudi at lcb Azpil at rcb, Kante in the pivot, Mount and Reece at wb are the only players I would say that truly deserve to be in the best XI since they are more likely than not the best player in the squad in that specific position. This is regardless vs opposition imo I would start these in their position vs any team in the world.

Andreas and Thiago are interchangeable which is fine. Either one through the middle should yield the same result. You don't pay £97m to bench a player so Rom up top. He at the start of the season was scoring effortlessly and once he gets his service expect him to return to business. I'd put Werner next to Mount just behind Rom for the best results in attack. 

Ben and Marcos are similar to Andreas and Thiago yet Ben is 100% better defensively and is much more athletic so can yet in behind the opposition defence easier. Both are exceptional strikers of the ball and its a toss up vs the opposition which one to start. 

Jorginho and Kovacic look good together but, between who start alongside Kanté It's a different matter. Kovacic is more likely to attempt to pass forward and Jorginho is better at keeping the side ticking. Again it's Andreas vs Silva either or should provide the same result. 

                           Mendy

  Azpilicueta   Christensen   Rudiger

James    Jorghino      Kanté    Chillwell 

                 Werner        Mount

                           Lukaku

I think this 11 should win the majority of the time. It should provide the right balance in attack and defense with the power of a bench that consists of Ziyech, Havertz, CHO, Ruben, Pulisic, Barley, Trevor, Alonso, etc.

 

Is there a meme for 'you have Kanté, you can play two midfielders' and then him picking Kovačić over Mount anyway?

 

EDIT: Ideally in the format of someone yelling and then looking disappointed. Perhaps with Pulisic in the background having been killed/chained up/cleaning up his 'closet'.

Edited October 18, 20214 yr by PloKoon13

5 hours ago, Bob stark said:

343,433 or whatever is more about how do you want to defend. You can pick any of 343,433,4231 and you can attack exactly the same way. 

The key is more how do you want to attack and who do you pick. 343 with Hazard - Costa - Pedro is completely different than 343 with Mount - Lukaku - Havertz

Personally I think that formations and set up of a team is hugely important. 

Its not a fluke our team looks solid with 3-4-3 because we defending with 5 defenders plus 2 defensive midfielders. As a consequence when attacking we are not as impressive as lets say Man City or Liverpool where they have 4 defenders instead of 5 and 1 defensive midfielder instead of 2. 

Therefore they can use more attack minded players to exploit the opposition.

Our team has great attacking talents too but we must use them to their strengths. For instance Hudson Odoi looked a totally different player playing on the left of the 3 where as when he plays as a wing back he lookes totally average. 

36 minutes ago, PloKoon13 said:

Is there a meme for 'you have Kanté, you can play two midfielders' and then him picking Kovačić over Mount anyway?

 

EDIT: Ideally in the format of someone yelling and then looking disappointed. Perhaps with Pulisic in the background having been killed/chained up/cleaning up his 'closet'.

I found it interesting how similar RLC and Kova were playing on Saturday.

Despite Ruben sitting he got box to box a fair few times too,.not as often as Kova. 

Kova is certainly better at winning the ball however I would argue they are equally good at holding on to it and playing a simple pass. Where Ruben is superior is his final pass, though that still needs some work.

Is a shame we cannot seem to train Kova to take the deeper midfield spot as he has the qualities to do it well and would keep him far away from our attacks most of the time, for which he is hopeless.

13 hours ago, Bob stark said:

Our offense under Sarri was horrific, slow, sterile possession until Hazard decide it is time to play football and if we concede first we almost always lose

Sarri changed the way we played radically so it took some time for our squad to learn that style of football. But that season at the very start we had in the first 5 matches 5 wins and went on to have a 12 game undefeated run. We also had more wins and a better goal difference in comparison to the last 2 seasons. Sarri got the best out of Hazard, Pedro, Kante and others when you see their attacking contribution, many players either had their best season attack-wise or equalled their best attacking season while they were in our club.

So don't tell me that we can't play a different style of football or that it can't work. 

 

Edited October 18, 20214 yr by Gol15

On 17/10/2021 at 18:05, Argo said:

I'm sorry but that's just simply not true. Thierry Henry arguably the greatest PL player of all time was bang average at best as a left winger, most world-class attacking fullbacks are playing fullback because they flopped as a winger (I remember Pep put Dani Alves on the wing for a one off tactical reason and he was every shade of sh*t).

Would Lampard and Drogba have given us the careers and output they did if we put them out on the wing?

Yes there's the odd rare exception of a player that could genuinely perform anywhere (Messi, Azpi, Gallas, Eto'o few of the outliers) but generally speaking footballers have specialist roles and not playing to them is completely counterproductive.

But Havertz hasn't been restricted to playing solely on the wing.

He has been given plenty of minutes in his preferred position but this season hasn't shown anything like the consistency enough to be playing every game, especially with the bigger squad we now have and more competition for places - never mind build a team around him!

Hope he gets him mojo back sometime soon and I'm sure when he does TT will play him wherever he wants to play!

 

 

5 hours ago, Gol15 said:

Sarri changed the way we played radically so it took some time for our squad to learn that style of football. But that season at the very start we had in the first 5 matches 5 wins and went on to have a 12 game undefeated run. We also had more wins and a better goal difference in comparison to the last 2 seasons. Sarri got the best out of Hazard, Pedro, Kante and others when you see their attacking contribution, many players either had their best season attack-wise or equalled their best attacking season while they were in our club.

So don't tell me that we can't play a different style of football or that it can't work. 

 

Sarri played something called circuit football. You basically played with certain pattern, that was why we looked very2 good early and once team understood our pattern it was so easy to defend and we were playing snoozefest football. 

There is a reason why Sarri struggled big time with us and Juventus. It is easy to give strict instructions to middle tier player but you can't give strict instructions to top players. 

 

1 hour ago, Bob stark said:

Sarri played something called circuit football. You basically played with certain pattern, that was why we looked very2 good early and once team understood our pattern it was so easy to defend and we were playing snoozefest football. 

There is a reason why Sarri struggled big time with us and Juventus. It is easy to give strict instructions to middle tier player but you can't give strict instructions to top players. 

 

That's what coaching does, that means that Sarri managed to change the way our squad played. All good managers make their teams play with a certain pattern, if you don't see anything that changed it means the manager isn't really having any particular style. How long does it take for Tuchel to set a pattern of our attacking phase because I haven't really seen us attack that well in the recent games at all? 

We finished top 3 and won Europa League, that's not struggling if you ask me. He failed to win the CL with Juventus, which others have done as well and honestly the squad of Juventus lacked some balance, I think it still does even if we lost against them recently but for example Sarri is now at Lazio which should be a worse team than Juventus and Sarri should be a worse manager compared to Allegri but they have the same amount of points right now.

I still think that Tuchel did an amazing job last season when he took over, he focused on being defensively good as he had no time to focus on other areas and it worked, but now we're looking at Tuchel after having a full pre-season as well and the team isn't improving. We are not conceding goals but our defending has relied upon the post and Mendy in order to accomplish the current defensive stats.

11 hours ago, Gentian said:

Personally I think that formations and set up of a team is hugely important. 

Its not a fluke our team looks solid with 3-4-3 because we defending with 5 defenders plus 2 defensive midfielders. As a consequence when attacking we are not as impressive as lets say Man City or Liverpool where they have 4 defenders instead of 5 and 1 defensive midfielder instead of 2. 

Therefore they can use more attack minded players to exploit the opposition.

Our team has great attacking talents too but we must use them to their strengths. For instance Hudson Odoi looked a totally different player playing on the left of the 3 where as when he plays as a wing back he lookes totally average. 

343 vs 4231 defensively of course will look completely different. 

The question is will they look different offensively. The answers really depend on the manager but 343 and 433 can look exactly the same except maybe in transition. It all depend on what the manager want. Formation is more about your defensive structure rather than offensive. 

Now back with 4231 magic, 

Lukaku 

Mount - Havertz - Werner 

This is what people want. Forget offensively, that is easy now how do you want to defend? With werner you can't ask him to track back. We have seen this under Lamp, it is like what is the point. You are asking player whose strength is in transition to not get involved in transition.So you need Mount to really defend like Willian to compensate, plus I haven't talked about what our midfield need to do. 

Odoi is better as lw than rwb. Thiago Silva is better at cb than st. What that have to do with formation?

 

 

8 minutes ago, Bob stark said:

343 vs 4231 defensively of course will look completely different. 

The question is will they look different offensively. The answers really depend on the manager but 343 and 433 can look exactly the same except maybe in transition. It all depend on what the manager want. Formation is more about your defensive structure rather than offensive. 

Now back with 4231 magic, 

Lukaku 

Mount - Havertz - Werner 

This is what people want. Forget offensively, that is easy now how do you want to defend? With werner you can't ask him to track back. We have seen this under Lamp, it is like what is the point. You are asking player whose strength is in transition to not get involved in transition.So you need Mount to really defend like Willian to compensate, plus I haven't talked about what our midfield need to do. 

Odoi is better as lw than rwb. Thiago Silva is better at cb than st. What that have to do with formation?

 

 

I’d rather we play a 4-3-3, and drop Mount into the middle of the park. IMO he isn’t creative or instinctive enough to play in the band behind the frontman. Fans keep banging on about his off the ball pressing but it matters more what he does with the ball. Last 2 seasons has been what; 5 goals & 7 assists for a player who basically starts all games when he is fit. We are in mid Oct and he has one assist.

Pulisic/CHO Lukaku/Kai  Werner/Ziyech

                    Mount/ Barkley

RLC/Jorginho             Kante/Kova/Saul

 

Chiwell/Alonso                    Azpi/James

      Thiago/Rudi       Christensen/Chalobah 

                        
                       Mendy