Arsenal 1 -2 Chelsea - Tactical Analysis

Arsenal 1 -2 Chelsea - Tactical Analysis

Chelsea grabbed all 3 points, in a very fiesty London derby and asserted their title credentials for this season. Much was said about the formation and tactics Di Matteo would chose , especially here at Chelsea FC 360 and RDM made the perfect choice.

Chelsea fielded the same tactics that they used against Stoke. I was one of the people who believed that Chelsea could have done well against Arsenal with Lampard and Mikel in double pivot but RDM knows best and I can clearly raise up my arms and say I made a mistake.

The European Champions dominated long spells of position much to the delight of Di Matteo. The trio of Mata, Hazard and Oscar can easily be dubbed as the Holy Trinity, as they all played a vital part in attack and defense.

Against Stoke , their movement was right in front of the opposition box but against Arsenal they moved around and initiated fluid passes right in the middle of the pitch. At time there was no striker, with Mata , Hazard, Oscar and Torres shifting wide when needed to create space.

I was definitely under the impression that Ramires would do good on the right wing and he definitely did do that but he made an even greater impact in the middle of the pitch. He broke up attacks along with Mikel and used his burst of pace on the right flank.

Possession was kept good by the players and it was all thanks to Mikel and Oscar. In the middle they created triangles, so that every time someone got the ball they had someone or the other to pass to. The holy trinity combined well and our danger at set pieces proved to be too tough for the Gunners to handle.

Moses, Cahill and Bertrand were brought on late in the game and this is how the tactical movement changed.

By removing Luiz, RDM slowed down our attack. Ivanovic and Cole became much more reserved going forward.

Roberto Di Matteo made himself a genius in my eyes by bringing on young Ryan Bertrand. He did not have much impact on the left wing except one incident but he had a huge impact on the center. The inclusion of him gave Chelsea three defensive midfielders, with Mikel playing a deeper defensive role. The main reason why , Chelsea had 7 defenders at the back when Giroud missed a decent opportunity . Ramires kept drifting on the right wing for extra cover.

Moses brought in extra pace. With the loss of Oscar and Mata, creativeness was considerably lost, so what can one do? Bring on huge amounts of speed. Moses defended well and also attacked quite decently.

This is what we can sum up ;

Against Arsenal at the Bridge we lost 5-3, despite playing very attackive football. This was hugely down to AVB's high-line policy but also because Arsenal exploited the space in-between the Chelsea defenders when hitting on the break.

Roberto Di Matteo learnt from it. On going 2-1 up thanks to a Mata free-kick and blunder by Laurent Koscielny, he ordered the boys to play deeper and told everyone except Hazard, Torres and Mata to attack. A 2-1 goal was fine in his eyes and even though Chelsea almost lost it, he did good in switching tactics in between the second half.

Sherry Philips (@bluebloodSherry)

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