We really need to improve our style of play against these teams most importantly off the ball movement in possession. Quick one twos to stretch and catch defenders out. I watched the Benfica highlights and that's how they ripped Barca apart.

We are just too slow in attack. Very predictable. The passing we do around midfield is fine as long as we can go up a gear but we never seem to. 

 

Lots of teams have proven me for numerous years that the September form means jack sh*te, you can be like City and go on a 14-15 match winning streak all autumn long and then get dumped out in the spring by Spurs and Lyon, or you can be like Zidane's Madrid and look like relegation fodder in the first part of the season and then end up winning all the major trophies come May. It is all about the way you peak in the most important part of the season.

Personally I take this last two matches as a blip in form and a wake up call, too - afterall maybe we are not that three headed dragon some thought we are before the season. Adjustments can be made and thankfully we have a more than capable manager to do so. A period like this had to come for Tuchel's Chelsea, too, a team can't simply go from strenght to strenght forever, dips in form are inevitable.

54 minutes ago, Ph.c. said:

Seems like lots of fans don’t expect Tuchel actually thinks about formations, tactics, strategy very much. I’m quite sure he does and also that he and his ppl are more competent than all TSE-users combined.

Criticism should always  be welcome of course, and no one should be above it, but come on - some ppl even calling for him to be replaced. It’s utterly ridiculous.

Btw, it’s always good to remember that there are two teams on the pitch, both trying their best to score and keeping the opponent from scoring. Juventus - while not as good as some years ago - are still very much a quality team with the worlds most experienced and clever defensive players. It’s no catastrophe to not score against them, and it’s not necessarily a tactical failure - might just be that they are really good defensively, and no matter who we put on the field would have had a hard time.

Chill ppl. 

Stop being sensible. This is a place reserved for knee-jerk reactions and doom-mongering only.

59 minutes ago, RMCM said:

Stop being sensible. This is a place reserved for knee-jerk reactions and doom-mongering only.

It really is,probably why I hardly bother coming on anymore.

13 hours ago, loz said:

I can't remotely see how Lukaku playing somehow stops our wing backs overlapping or runs off the ball. 

Because if you are looking for 30 yard passes straight into him how are you expecting wing backs who were just defending to overlap ? We used to defend as a 5 attack as a 5 not lump it up to Lukaku 

7 hours ago, Frankie8Lampard said:

I don't think its fair to use the big games we've played this season as a reason to say Lukaku is not a big game player. Against Liverpool we had 10 men for half the game and were forced to defend for half the match and against City for whatever reason we chose to play defensive. In both games, Lukaku was basically one striker on an island surrounded by defenders. If anything, our other forwards didn't do enough to link the midfield with the attack. 

And even if you want to use the 'big game' route, why is Lukaku being isolated as the only one not playing well against top teams? Last time I checked, Havertz and Ziyech were just as poor today and it had nothing to do with Lukaku. If anything, Lukaku was our only forward that wasn't giving the ball away carelessly in the final third. Blaming Lukaku for other player's poor performances just seems like grasping at straws.

I also see people continuously bring up last season as if we were some master goal scoring team, but if I remember correctly, we were missing chance after chance last season and had one of the worst chance to goal ratio in the league. We won a lot of out matches by lone goals and it was really our world class defence (And Kante) that bailed us out half the time. That reason was the main one why we signed Lukaku, why should we go back to playing the same forward line last season against big teams?

 

He's being questioned because a) our decline in big games has coincided with him playing them (think of it as an opposite to how our defense improved with Mendy, he was instantly identified as the reason and rightly so) and b) it's not a two game sample size, he has a near decade long track record of going missing in them (if we look at last night's opponents, he scored one penalty vs them while at Inter).

If we stick to City for a minute, the reason they are so good is they have every player involved in the build up and have elite pressing, the reason we were able to beat them three times on the spin last season is we matched that. If we look at every successful club since Pep came on the scene, the vast majority (including us last season) were elite at two things, pressing and having every single player heavily involved in the build up play, how many UCL and league champions of modern times have had a traditional fox in the box? Even the best of those (Mario Gomez and RVN) were sacrafised to benefit the team.

Above all else, dropping Rom for these games in the short term may actually trigger him to knuckle down and adapt his game to suit the system for these crunch games (similar to how Cesc adapted for Conte), if he is getting selected regardless then what motivation has he got?

And you're right we weren't some master scoring team but we were creating chances to waste. We've gone from hoping Werner/Kai/Mason etc can take one chance of many to hoping Rom can take one, the former is infinity times more sustainable as eventually players revert to the mean.

9 hours ago, forbzy said:

I think you may be letting Kai's goal in the Champions League final gloss things a bit last season. Yes he did have a few decent games and showed some signs that he might go on to great things this season. But I'm not sure I would go as far to say he was fantastic as a false 9 in all those games. If Werner could actually finish then maybe we would have invested in a different position than CF this summer. But the fact that Kai was playing false 9 illustrated the issues we had in that position overall. 

I feel that the key to those games in the run to the Champions League win, was that we most considered underdogs. That worked massively in our favour with Tuchels' tactical approach. Now we are no longer underdogs in a lot of these games we need a different strategy, and so far he is still trying to figure that out it seems.

The only games we were truly underdogs was the final. We were heavy favourites to get past Porto and there was certainly expectations to finish off the Madrid sides at home after the positive away results.

And check my posts from around the restart in June 2020, Kai at false 9 is something I've been a shipper off since he played there at Levekusen, infact I'm a big fan of false 9 in general in the modern day, when done right it feels like you have an extra player. That's why I always laugh at people saying Liverpool should replace Firmino (not so much now but when he was in his peak), he was the biggest reason they were so good.

Whìch brings me to another idea, Rom at RF in a 343 worked well for Belgium with a false 9, I wonder if the same could be the case here? One of the advantages of having wingbacks hogging the sidelines is that the 'wide forwards' can play closer to the goal so it's not like we'll just be sticking him out wide.

Edited September 30, 20214 yr by Argo

When a team has top defenders like Juve and play that defensive it's difficult for any team to break down.  Reminds me how we played with 10 men against Liverpool when one of the best attacks in Europe didn't make a single chance to score, at least last night we did create a couple.  The main issue was the defensive lapse in concentration for their goal, other than that a draw away wouldn't have been too bad given Juves tactics.  It just wasn't our night and we didn't play well, but these things happen.

Let's us also not forget one of our posters said in the Spurs thread "will we even lose again".

Nice one Chilwell mk 2.

2 hours ago, DarkMata said:

When a team has top defenders like Juve and play that defensive it's difficult for any team to break down.  Reminds me how we played with 10 men against Liverpool when one of the best attacks in Europe didn't make a single chance to score, at least last night we did create a couple.  The main issue was the defensive lapse in concentration for their goal, other than that a draw away wouldn't have been too bad given Juves tactics.  It just wasn't our night and we didn't play well, but these things happen.

Fair point about Juve's defending last night although we made it easy for them in that department for most of the game. Also this is not a great Juve team defensively like we know from the past. They have let a fair amount of goals in already this season in Serie A. They defended well when they needed to last night but they only really needed to step up for the last 15-20 minutes. The rest of the game we were happy to just maintain possession and do very little with it.

A draw would have been a decent result for us last night and it certainly seemed to be our aim given the evidence of the first half. But once they scored we didn't seem to change plans quickly enough.

18 hours ago, Deino said:

It's basically the same tactics that got us multiple goals. Last season we got tons of chances playing this exact system. 

The difference is no one found any solution to Juve's challenges today. 

hmm.. but did we ? i remember quite a few games where we failed to fashion games.. in fact barring one whole of last year we never scored more than 2 goals.. but i guess your argument is around werner and us fluffing those.

On 29/09/2021 at 22:38, Frankie8Lampard said:

This just isn't accurate and seems like a narrative that the people who don't want Lukaku are building. The team has been doing all that and more in previous matches that we have won. Just because our attacking players haven't performed well in the last few games, that doesn't mean Lukaku is the cause.

As conte said in the Italian commentary chelsea need to learn how to use Lukaku. 
 

We have shoed him into a system that used a false 9..you can’t possibly play the same way it’s not rocket science or a conspiracy.

We need him he has value for us, but we need to use him differently and I’m not opposed to using the false 9 for certain big games. 

12 hours ago, Argo said:

He's being questioned because a) our decline in big games has coincided with him playing them (think of it as an opposite to how our defense improved with Mendy, he was instantly identified as the reason and rightly so) and b) it's not a two game sample size, he has a near decade long track record of going missing in them (if we look at last night's opponents, he scored one penalty vs them while at Inter).

If we stick to City for a minute, the reason they are so good is they have every player involved in the build up and have elite pressing, the reason we were able to beat them three times on the spin last season is we matched that. If we look at every successful club since Pep came on the scene, the vast majority (including us last season) were elite at two things, pressing and having every single player heavily involved in the build up play, how many UCL and league champions of modern times have had a traditional fox in the box? Even the best of those (Mario Gomez and RVN) were sacrafised to benefit the team.

Above all else, dropping Rom for these games in the short term may actually trigger him to knuckle down and adapt his game to suit the system for these crunch games (similar to how Cesc adapted for Conte), if he is getting selected regardless then what motivation has he got?

And you're right we weren't some master scoring team but we were creating chances to waste. We've gone from hoping Werner/Kai/Mason etc can take one chance of many to hoping Rom can take one, the former is infinity times more sustainable as eventually players revert to the mean.

The only games we were truly underdogs was the final. We were heavy favourites to get past Porto and there was certainly expectations to finish off the Madrid sides at home after the positive away results.

And check my posts from around the restart in June 2020, Kai at false 9 is something I've been a shipper off since he played there at Levekusen, infact I'm a big fan of false 9 in general in the modern day, when done right it feels like you have an extra player. That's why I always laugh at people saying Liverpool should replace Firmino (not so much now but when he was in his peak), he was the biggest reason they were so good.

Whìch brings me to another idea, Rom at RF in a 343 worked well for Belgium with a false 9, I wonder if the same could be the case here? One of the advantages of having wingbacks hogging the sidelines is that the 'wide forwards' can play closer to the goal so it's not like we'll just be sticking him out wide.

Honestly I’m on exactly the same page I don’t know why people can’t see it, PSG, city, us last season, Liverpool, none play with a target man rather 3 forwards. 
 

We attacked With 5 defended with 5, this was out winning formula, giving this up for a target man it madness, I’m not even saying don’t use him just use him in the 3 let him use his finish but play him in the attack moving with a 5 not lump it up to him...

1 hour ago, SFL82 said:

Honestly I’m on exactly the same page I don’t know why people can’t see it, PSG, city, us last season, Liverpool, none play with a target man rather 3 forwards. 
 

We attacked With 5 defended with 5, this was out winning formula, giving this up for a target man it madness, I’m not even saying don’t use him just use him in the 3 let him use his finish but play him in the attack moving with a 5 not lump it up to him...

Pep must have completely agree with you, that is why city tried to sign kane for 150m.

2 hours ago, Bob stark said:

Pep must have completely agree with you, that is why city tried to sign kane for 150m.

Pep also dropped Aguero until he adapted to his way of playing.

12 hours ago, Argo said:

He's being questioned because a) our decline in big games has coincided with him playing them (think of it as an opposite to how our defense improved with Mendy, he was instantly identified as the reason and rightly so) and b) it's not a two game sample size, he has a near decade long track record of going missing in them (if we look at last night's opponents, he scored one penalty vs them while at Inter).

If we stick to City for a minute, the reason they are so good is they have every player involved in the build up and have elite pressing, the reason we were able to beat them three times on the spin last season is we matched that. If we look at every successful club since Pep came on the scene, the vast majority (including us last season) were elite at two things, pressing and having every single player heavily involved in the build up play, how many UCL and league champions of modern times have had a traditional fox in the box? Even the best of those (Mario Gomez and RVN) were sacrafised to benefit the team.

Above all else, dropping Rom for these games in the short term may actually trigger him to knuckle down and adapt his game to suit the system for these crunch games (similar to how Cesc adapted for Conte), if he is getting selected regardless then what motivation has he got?

And you're right we weren't some master scoring team but we were creating chances to waste. We've gone from hoping Werner/Kai/Mason etc can take one chance of many to hoping Rom can take one, the former is infinity times more sustainable as eventually players revert to the mean.

The only games we were truly underdogs was the final. We were heavy favourites to get past Porto and there was certainly expectations to finish off the Madrid sides at home after the positive away results.

And check my posts from around the restart in June 2020, Kai at false 9 is something I've been a shipper off since he played there at Levekusen, infact I'm a big fan of false 9 in general in the modern day, when done right it feels like you have an extra player. That's why I always laugh at people saying Liverpool should replace Firmino (not so much now but when he was in his peak), he was the biggest reason they were so good.

Whìch brings me to another idea, Rom at RF in a 343 worked well for Belgium with a false 9, I wonder if the same could be the case here? One of the advantages of having wingbacks hogging the sidelines is that the 'wide forwards' can play closer to the goal so it's not like we'll just be sticking him out wide.

I don't agree in general about your stance on Lukaku but I do think this is a great post, in particular challenging the idea that a clinical Lukaku is a better outcome overall than an effective attacking unit. Lukaku was bought because we had a great attacking system that created a lot of chance, that needed a clinical finisher. We've stopped creating chances, the chances we do create are even lesser quality, and we are relying on a single 'clinical' player to produce. This is a risky proposition because when Lukaku fails, we all fail.

Just two weeks ago Tuchel and Chelsea were being feted for having 15 different goal scorers in 14 games. If you were to review the squad after the last two games that seems like a distant memory.

There does need to be a bit of perspective here and we can't draw conclusions from just two games to assume that our tactics in "big games" are broken. Yes, Chelsea beat City three times but of those three occasions only the CL final was the most comprehensive and even then, City had great chances to take control of the game. It's difficult to read too much into that. Game state is an important thing we should never discount. 

I agree 100% about the "false 9", and not just in the forward position but all around the pitch. A good pressing, well-organised defensive team causes an opposition to regress to a 4-6 block; 4 attackers, 6 defenders that remain rigid in their positions and patterns of play. This allows the defensive team to 'control' the attacking team, shepherding them into unfavourable situtations where they lose the ball. And for a perfect example of that we need only to watch the Champions League final where Man City were forced into hoping their wide players could beat Chilwell/James 1v1.

One of the problems we have at Chelsea is that if you press us effectively and in an organised manner, we will fall into the trap of not just a 4-6 block but a 2-8. This is because we have so few players in any given teamsheet that are able to break the lines that an organised press effectively results in us playing 2-8 or 1-9 - think of Werner/Lukaku vs City.

We need players to break the lines and that's where the 'false' nature of having Mount and Havertz in the starting line-up is so crucial. Mount, Havertz and Kante are the only three players we have who routinely break through lines with their running and are a plausible goal threat. Kovacic, Pulisic, Jorginho, Alonso etc are all good at one thing or another but are so poor in other aspects that it can be exploited. Saul Niguez should 100% be that player but is a long way away from being consistent.

Basically we need Conor Gallagher back

3 hours ago, Bob stark said:

Pep must have completely agree with you, that is why city tried to sign kane for 150m.

I mean Kane is the perfect deep-lying forward, offers anything Firmino does with the ability to score 20+ goals a season. Lukaku is also capable of this kind of player but needs to be receiving the ball out wide on the right.

1 hour ago, Argo said:

Pep also dropped Aguero until he adapted to his way of playing.

How is that relevant ?  Has Tuchel complained about how Lukaku play? 

Tbf false 9, target man, true 9 whatever, does not matter. If your wide attacker can score at will, you want your st to do more support duty aka Liverpool style. If your cf is a goal getter, you want your wide player to play more supporting role aka Bayern style. Which is one is better? I don't know, I like pool style better but that is irrelevant the most important thing is decide who are your best players build system around them. 

 

17 minutes ago, SydneyChelsea said:

 

We need players to break the lines and that's where the 'false' nature of having Mount and Havertz in the starting line-up is so crucial. Mount, Havertz and Kante are the only three players we have who routinely break through lines with their running and are a plausible goal threat. Kovacic, Pulisic, Jorginho, Alonso etc are all good at one thing or another but are so poor in other aspects that it can be exploited. Saul Niguez should 100% be that player but is a long way away from being consistent.

Basically we need Conor Gallagher back

Are you saying that Conor Gallagher is better than uefa poty?