Chelsea need Victor Moses’ eighth game as wingback to be his best yet. Manchester City will test every aspect of Chelsea’s tactics, and the recently-converted wingback is particularly vital to a Blues win.
Victor Moses’ positioning against Tottenham encapsulated the broader run of play going on around him. Tottenham pressed high and fast in the opening 30 minutes, controlling every facet of the game.
The Spurs’ line pinned Moses at the level of their midfielders. The visitors blocked Cesar Azpilicueta’s and N’Golo Kante’s usual outlet passing lane to Moses. This drew Moses even deeper into his own zone, making him more of a right-back on a five-man line (Marcos Alonso did much the same).
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The limited passing options for the centre-backs and Thibaut Courtois flummoxed every Chelsea attempt to play out from the back. Without any targets to move the ball forward and white shirts seemingly everywhere, Chelsea could only maintain possession for a few seconds before conceding control back to Tottenham.
Around the half hour mark, Moses moved higher up the pitch. He took over the space between the Hotspur lines. This was a more advanced position in “absolute” terms, but closer to his usual position relative to the opposition. Once he found the space to create inbound and outbound passing lanes, Chelsea started to string together longer spurts of possession.
When the teams came out from the half, Moses knew just where to go on the pitch and relative to Tottenham. Along with Marcos Alonso and Pedro, Moses returned to his marauding ways. Within five minutes, he had a dream amount of space to run into and fire in Chelsea’s winning goal.
Victor Moses’ tactical adjustments and performance level reflect Antonio Conte’s training and motivation. Moses and Conte quickly developed a rapport during pre-season, and the switch to the 3-4-3 brought everything hurdling forward.
"[Conte] came up to me and said, ‘You know what, I like your football. I don’t want you to go out on loan this year’. That gave me a big boost. I thought, ‘It’s good to have a manager like this, speaking to players, I’ve never really had it before at Chelsea’… When a manager doesn’t have any interest in you, you can see that as a player. – SkySports"
The promise of a full season at Stamford Bridge was only the first victory. Not until the abrupt, Arsenal-induced switch to the 3-4-3 did Moses really discover the extent of Conte’s vision.
"We were being lined up (on the training pitch) and I thought, ‘Where am I playing? Right-back? Wing-back?'”… At that first session he was talking to me, saying, ‘This is what you’ve got to do, this is how you’re meant to play the position’. I was like, ‘OK’.”"
From that simple “OK,” Chelsea and the Premier League – and eventually the rest of the football world – discovered its most overlooked talent. Victor Moses was man of the match in his first career game as a wingback. He has since earned the honours two more times, to go along with a PFA Player of the Month award for November.
But those accolades provide little more than momentum as he and his club go up against Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City. The match will provide the greatest test so far of Antonio Conte’s training. Chelsea will need to execute his trademark blend of structure and fluidity – the “chameleon,” of Euro 2016 fame – to defeat the Citizens.
Next: Pep Guardiola identifies Pedro's top contributions to Chelsea's run
Depending on your point of view, Victor Moses’ success this season is either the loan system’s greatest success story or biggest failure, in that he was overlooked for so long. A few more wins and people may forget that Moses ever worse a color other than Blue. Unless we’re trolling Mourinho.