36 minutes ago, RIP Mourinho said:

You've completely missed the point, well done again. What's Kovacic or Rodri got to do with anything at all?

We play 4231 with 3 CB's.

City play 4231 with 3 CB's.

Arsenal play 433 with 3 CB's.

Harking back, you could make an argument we used to play 3 cb's in a back 4 way back when

Ivanovic was arguably a hybrid CB/RB, with JT and Cahill in CB.

The idea of having one "sitting" fullback and one with license to push on isn't a new one at all, and I dont think a CB asked to play as a sitting fullback is massively different to them playing on the left or right of a back 3. I think people get too hung up on positions personally.

On 09/09/2023 at 17:19, Sconnie Blue said:

His argument though was that they are still playing with 3 CBs. 

White, Saliba, Gabriel

Gvardiol, Dias, Akanji

We are playing a back 3 formation, Man City and Arsenal simply aren't. Transfermarkt shows they play 4-2-3-1 and 4-3-3 respectively, while we play a 3-4-2-1. This is also the case if you watch the matches, or if you google the formations or if you go to FbRef. Thank you very much, there is a clear difference between our tactics and their tactics.

9 minutes ago, Gol15 said:

We are playing a back 3 formation, Man City and Arsenal simply aren't. Transfermarkt shows they play 4-2-3-1 and 4-3-3 respectively, while we play a 3-4-2-1. This is also the case if you watch the matches, or if you google the formations or if you go to FbRef. Thank you very much, there is a clear difference between our tactics and their tactics.

TransferMarkt is wrong. Why on earth would you listen to them over actual words from Poch, Silva and Chilwell.

Genuinely like talking to a brick wall with you. 

1 hour ago, cfr95 said:

 I think people get too hung up on positions personally.

This. What matter is your skillset aka what your bring to the table. 

21 hours ago, Gol15 said:

This is also the case if you watch the matches,

Errr....Maybe if you watch the matches without any understanding of what you're seeing. If you watched the matches and are convinced you're seeing a back 3/5 then you should switch to tennis. Simpler formations there.

2 hours ago, venom2011 said:

Errr....Maybe if you watch the matches without any understanding of what you're seeing. If you watched the matches and are convinced you're seeing a back 3/5 then you should switch to tennis. Simpler formations there.

I don't see a single argument here. Anyone that watches us play knows that we have been playing a 3-4-2-1 ever since the league actually started, forget about the pre-season.

LCB-CB-RCB

LCB-CB-RCB

LCB-CB-RCB

This is from https://weaintgotnohistory.sbnation.com/chelsea-fc-analysis

Now the most recent match:

Any possible youtube video or website shows we had a back 3 formation, it's your problem that you don't understand how a team rotates and moves without the ball.

 

 

4 hours ago, Gol15 said:

I don't see a single argument here. Anyone that watches us play knows that we have been playing a 3-4-2-1 ever since the league actually star

Any possible youtube video or website shows we had a back 3 formation, it's your problem that you don't understand how a team rotates and moves without the ball.

 

 

So you listen to youtube nerds with no qualifications over the words of the manager and players. Gotcha. Makes a lot more sense now.

7 minutes ago, RIP Mourinho said:

So you listen to youtube nerds with no qualifications over the words of the manager and players. 

Tbf that is the case for a lot of fans this days. 

 

A little-known fact about football is that players remain static in their assigned formational role and don't actually move around the pitch at all.

Gol - I think you are getting too fixated on labels. The below image (from the West Ham game passmap you linked above) shows an almost perfect positional height symmetry between Colwill and Gusto, but the website has labelled one as 'LCB' and one as 'RWB': are those labels meaningful within the context? Ben Chilwell ('LWB') is the second-highest player on the pitch. (You'll also note that 'LCM' and 'RCM' occupy almost the same lateral space.)

Football is a complex, dynamic game with a lot of moving parts. Labels are useful to gain a basic understanding of a player's role, however they are not imperative, i.e. they are not a declarative, unilateral constraint; players are all individuals and they will all perform tasks differently. Dani Alves and Joel Ward are both nominally right-backs; do they do the same thing on the pitch?

Smart coaches will set up a team in a way which allows players to do most frequently the things they are good at. You can stick Ivanovic on the halfway line at goal kicks because he is big, powerful, has an athletic jump, and has excellent heading technique. This allows you to bypass your entire half of the pitch with the ball without having to worry about your centre-backs passing the ball through the opposition forwards' press because you can just lump the ball directly at him and trust him to win the first ball. Alan Wright couldn't do that, however it doesn't make either one of them any more or less of a full-back. 

I know you enjoy a heavy use of stats for your understanding of football (which there is nothing wrong with), so I imagine a lot of responses to you will mention the 'eye test'. This is exactly what these responses refer to - what can you actually see the player doing on the pitch?

Not that passmaps are reliable indicators of anything at all other than pass frequency, but that's another argument... 

52 minutes ago, PloKoon13 said:

A little-known fact about football is that players remain static in their assigned formational role and don't actually move around the pitch at all.

Gol - I think you are getting too fixated on labels. The below image (from the West Ham game passmap you linked above) shows an almost perfect positional height symmetry between Colwill and Gusto, but the website has labelled one as 'LCB' and one as 'RWB': are those labels meaningful within the context? Ben Chilwell ('LWB') is the second-highest player on the pitch. (You'll also note that 'LCM' and 'RCM' occupy almost the same lateral space.)

Football is a complex, dynamic game with a lot of moving parts. Labels are useful to gain a basic understanding of a player's role, however they are not imperative, i.e. they are not a declarative, unilateral constraint; players are all individuals and they will all perform tasks differently. Dani Alves and Joel Ward are both nominally right-backs; do they do the same thing on the pitch?

Smart coaches will set up a team in a way which allows players to do most frequently the things they are good at. You can stick Ivanovic on the halfway line at goal kicks because he is big, powerful, has an athletic jump, and has excellent heading technique. This allows you to bypass your entire half of the pitch with the ball without having to worry about your centre-backs passing the ball through the opposition forwards' press because you can just lump the ball directly at him and trust him to win the first ball. Alan Wright couldn't do that, however it doesn't make either one of them any more or less of a full-back. 

I know you enjoy a heavy use of stats for your understanding of football (which there is nothing wrong with), so I imagine a lot of responses to you will mention the 'eye test'. This is exactly what these responses refer to - what can you actually see the player doing on the pitch?

Not that passmaps are reliable indicators of anything at all other than pass frequency, but that's another argument... 

The whole point is that we do play with the 3 central defenders in the backline, you can argue that at some specific moments we do form a backline of 4 players but that dynamic alone doesn't prove that we actually play a 4-3-3 or any other back 4 formation.

It's very natural that when we start from the back that the ball goes to the right side of the pitch and from that point on the backline moves towards that side, making it look as if there are 2 CB players covering that area while the 3rd one is higher up the pitch just like on the image, but make no mistake the LCB label is fully correct, Colwill might look as if he's a left-back there but he's really not.

The full-backs do push up and the very reason why they are allowed to do so is due to this reality that we play a back 3 formation:

You don't see the full-backs, cause we have a back 3 lineup.

Again you don't see the full-back because they have the freedom to push up the pitch due to us having a back 3 lineup.

My argument is that you can't simply say that we're playing a back 4 formation and that I don't know what I'm seeing, we clearly do play a back 3 formation most of the time. The dynamic that happens during a match doesn't mean that it's what we're playing as a team and it's this:

Clearly you see that Gusto is the RB and the Colwill is the LB right? This happened during the opening minutes of the second half vs N.Forest, a just a few minutes later you see this:

Chilwell and Gusto push forward due to us having 3 CBs behind them, this is our norm since the start of the season and every website reports us playing a back 3 formation because it's the correct thing to report so our dynamic isn't actually a back 4 formation even if at the start of the first and second half it looks like we're actually playing a 4-3-2-1, in practice what happens in every single match since the start of the season is a 3-3-3-1/3-3-2-2 formation.

 

This is our reality and it's not working for us.

 

 

I'm just pleased I know each team starts with 11 players, one of which in goal 

7 hours ago, Gol15 said:

The whole point is that we do play with the 3 central defenders in the backline, you can argue that at some specific moments we do form a backline of 4 players but that dynamic alone doesn't prove that we actually play a 4-3-3 or any other back 4 formation.

It's very natural that when we start from the back that the ball goes to the right side of the pitch and from that point on the backline moves towards that side, making it look as if there are 2 CB players covering that area while the 3rd one is higher up the pitch just like on the image, but make no mistake the LCB label is fully correct, Colwill might look as if he's a left-back there but he's really not.

The full-backs do push up and the very reason why they are allowed to do so is due to this reality that we play a back 3 formation:

You don't see the full-backs, cause we have a back 3 lineup.

Again you don't see the full-back because they have the freedom to push up the pitch due to us having a back 3 lineup.

My argument is that you can't simply say that we're playing a back 4 formation and that I don't know what I'm seeing, we clearly do play a back 3 formation most of the time. The dynamic that happens during a match doesn't mean that it's what we're playing as a team and it's this:

Clearly you see that Gusto is the RB and the Colwill is the LB right? This happened during the opening minutes of the second half vs N.Forest, a just a few minutes later you see this:

Chilwell and Gusto push forward due to us having 3 CBs behind them, this is our norm since the start of the season and every website reports us playing a back 3 formation because it's the correct thing to report so our dynamic isn't actually a back 4 formation even if at the start of the first and second half it looks like we're actually playing a 4-3-2-1, in practice what happens in every single match since the start of the season is a 3-3-3-1/3-3-2-2 formation.

 

This is our reality and it's not working for us.

 

 

Sterling on the left 😱😱😱

Glad to be roasted for this but I actually agree with @Gol15. In fact, I didn't realise this was so controversial until this thread. I thought we have been playing a back three all season!

Maybe the real issue we are all missing is that the above debate points to a disturbing reality where neither the players, nor the coaches, nor the spectators have any idea of what is supposed to happen on the pitch. 

If players say they're told to play in a back four but there is clear photographic evidence that the team's shape at least sometimes looks like a back three, that's a real f**king problem

The question is, does Chilwell get down to defend as deep as Colwill, Silva, Disasi and Gusto or does he stay a bit more forward as you see Sterling doing? For me, it’s the second option, Chilwell is staying a bit more forward during the defensive phases of the game like we see Sterling. He’s been used as a winger and not as a wing back. Of course, during the game, things are more fluid and you can see Chilwell defending a bit deeper on the left, but in general, he’s not set up to be a wing back by Pochettino (and both have said so themselves).

v Bolivia yesterday.

 

Great to have a real baller in our side. 

 

Concerned his frustration is starting to show. Being played too far forward imo, and is unable to impact the game. 

His frustration resulted in a stupid, unprofessional yellow card when substituted. 

Hope he gets his head into a focused place and knuckles down. To be candid, it’s all kind of gone wrong since his penalty miss. 

I'm not one to buy into rumours but I think I can believe he could be assessing his options right now, he looked very frustrated there when he was coming off. 

I think we should be playing him deeper.

If his frustrated maybe his should start looking at himself first, since his signed his looked average.

22 minutes ago, PhilH930 said:

Concerned his frustration is starting to show. Being played too far forward imo, and is unable to impact the game. 

His frustration resulted in a stupid, unprofessional yellow card when substituted. 

Hope he gets his head into a focused place and knuckles down. To be candid, it’s all kind of gone wrong since his penalty miss. 

Pochettino has already made 4 seriously poor decisions early on. 

1 - Starting the season with way too many defenders on the pitch.

2 - Not showing the slightest hint that he has his own style of football.

3 - Thinking Maatsen is an attacker and not a LB/LWB.

4 - Playing Enzo too high up the pitch.

6 minutes ago, Scott Harris said:

Pochettino has already made 4 seriously poor decisions early on. 

1 - Starting the season with way too many defenders on the pitch.

2 - Not showing the slightest hint that he has his own style of football.

3 - Thinking Maatsen is an attacker and not a LB/LWB.

4 - Playing Enzo too high up the pitch.

Agree with a lot of that tbf, however, I've heard Maatsen has some big flaws defensively at LB. Never watched a single Burnley game I'll be honest but from what I read even the Burnley fans who sang his praises said he was a liability defensively but offensively he was excellent. And that's not even in the Premier League, so that could be why he's not being utilised there. 

I would like to see him get a go there though instead of Colwill playing there. 

How long before he puts in a transfer request?

2 minutes ago, Victor90 said:

Agree with a lot of that tbf, however, I've heard Maatsen has some big flaws defensively at LB. Never watched a single Burnley game I'll be honest but from what I read even the Burnley fans who sang his praises said he was a liability defensively but offensively he was excellent. And that's not even in the Premier League, so that could be why he's not being utilised there. 

I would like to see him get a go there though instead of Colwill playing there. 

Probably similar to Alexander-Arnold. But still, I would rather him be very good attacking from left back and poor at defending than looking totally lost as a winger or attacking midfielder.

1 minute ago, axman2526 said:

How long before he puts in a transfer request?

I think that's not even a possibility for him right now, he has a lot to prove here.

How come some of you are just coming to terms about Enzo. When Kokefran made comments about Enzo, he got banned.  I won't say much but a player who cost that much should be able to carry the entire team. 

The fixtures i was expecting we get maximum points are all gone. The next 2 months fixtures are against the likes of teams on some good form, City, assanal, BHA, Villa, etc. It is going to be a long season. With 12 players out, I am all but throwing in the towel right now. 

 

Looking forward to next season. Maybe we can sign good strikers or scout Nigerian strikers. They seem to be everywhere, Boniface, Osimhen, Orban, Awoniyi etc. .

Edited September 17, 20232 yr by sgblues