Tactical Analysis: Chelsea vs Stoke City

Tactical Analysis: Chelsea vs Stoke City

Chelsea played one of their best games this season, with intricate and beautiful football. They were however, shy on goal and could only scrap a late winner from Ashley Cole.

How Chelsea set up

At first look you can easily see that the penalty area was always crowded and this caused a lot of problems for the Stoke defense as they needed high levels of concentration, which finally broke in the 84th minute.

Oscar, Hazard and Mata where at each other's places, thereby making it impossible to man mark. They found each other with intricate and creative passes, including backheels in an attempt to create space for each other.

Torres did not have much chances. He feeds on through balls and expects an attacking midfielder to see his run. Stoke defense was having none of that as they stayed tight, which forced the Chelsea midfielders to come at them due to lack of space.

Another brilliant move by Di Matteo was to finally move Ramires into a holding midfielder role. Lampard was having trouble adapting to it and he did brilliantly along with Mikel, to break threatening attacks. He was also found darting on the right flank and used his pace intelligently to win stray balls back.

Cole was good in the flanks whereas Ivanovic's positioning was terrible. Often found him in places where he was not supposed to be and even had the cheek to dive ! He did good defensively but in a whole if the Chelsea attack has to flourish, Cesar Azpilicueta has to play. He is a brilliant attacking rightback with pin point crossing ability, which can only add more magic to this Chelsea side.

We did good work to pick up three points on Saturday and I'm just asking for more. Di Matteo was right on target with his tactics and against teams which do not park the bus like Stoke did, we can see opposition defenders frequently picking the ball back from their own net.

Sherry Philips (@bluebloodSherry)