Now that we’re slowly finding our footing defensively, the attack decides to switch off😂

Chelsea for you

FireSide

The Key

In highly compact games, the key is fielding players with higher close dribbling metrics in attacking areas. People who can force breakage of lines through ball carrying. People like Neto (I love this guy), Garnacho, Pedro are mostly toothless in such matches and offer almost zero impact.

With Estevao's style of play (dribbling with the ball outside of his body) he'd almost also be useless too. Why? The compactness compounded with double marking would limit his style to having only one side to make movements.

Solution?

I'd put Estevao in 10 to give him spaces on both sides to maneuver by dribbling both left, right, forward and back.

Put Palmer on the right wing (has both close control, central control and outside control).

Gittens would have come on the left but he is currently hard to trust and rely on. So I'd first go with Neto then him or Garnacho. To hell, I can even try Buonanote there to come in in half spaces and let Cucurella provide the outer attack width.

Or have Neto on the wide left, Palmer on the right half space and Reece/Gusto providing the right width

But of course I am just some crazy little man that coaches and manages only in my dreams. Just two cent opinion.

🗣️ Ricardo Carvalho: "Sometimes you have teams that need to play well to get results. In that time at Chelsea, what I feel now when I think about it, is that team sometimes didn’t need to play so well to get results, because it was difficult to play against us."

Adam Wharton impresses me every time i watch him. he’s very very good

Their obsession may end up with premium tears. Especially now when we have old men in that backline playing like they have already retired.