Antonio Conte reshaped Chelsea’s players and squad into a potent 3-4-3 last season. This season his work on the defence and midfield can propel Andreas Christensen’s career and return David Luiz to his best position.
Chelsea will somehow manage to not give Antonio Conte the credit if he gets Andreas Christensen into the team as a starting center-back. If Conte does that, he will have promoted a few academy players into the team, helping the squad move forward and get better. That will be a remarkable accomplishment that many people will fail to recognize.
Chelsea’s win at Tottenham was an interesting one for many reasons. David Luiz moved into defensive midfield. With enough partners to cover for him and the maturity he developed last season he could be perfect in that role. Luiz, N’Golo Kante and Tiemoue Bakayoko resemble a hybrid version of Conte’s three-man Juventus midfield. What the Blues’ central midfield lacks in level of finesse they make up for in total athleticism.
David Luiz has always been better suited as a midfielder. He has long made up for his mistakes at center-back with his profound level of athleticism. He rectified many of those mistakes last season, but they crept back into his game during the final eight weeks.
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No matter what people say, he is not the best “ball-playing” center-back money can find. He can hit a long ball, but his pass completion percentages are incredibly low. His long balls are just long searching clearances that 50% of the time find a Chelsea player. But with his new sense of positional maturity and his already high level of athletic play, David Luiz could be the perfect foil to Kante and Bakayoko in a three-man midfield.
Andreas Christensen should take David Luiz’s spot on the back-line now, while Cesar Azpilicueta can protect him in his formative years. Christensen is a fantastic passer and a natural center-half. He reads the game impeccably, and Chelsea could ride his growth in the position to over a decade of success. There is no reason he could not turn into the next Leonardo Bonucci.
The fear with Christensen this year would of course be in his lack of Premier League experience. That is a legitimate but perhaps overly cautious concern. Players learn through experience and, as I’ve said time and time again, the only experience that counts for building a Premier League and Champions League star is top level league and European experience. Not second division, not lower league – top level experience and that’s all.
Andreas Christensen made 79 appearances for Borussia Monchengladbach over the course of the past two seasons. Nine of those were in the Champions League. Combine those with Gary Cahill’s 388 Premier League appearances and 42 European appearances and Cesar Azpilicueta’s 228 Premier League appearances and 31 European showings, and Chelsea have a fine back line for the Premier League. With the midfield protecting those three, the Blues will have a great building foundation for the coming generations of Chelsea youth and Chelsea supporters.
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Antonio Conte will somehow manage this near-seamless transition and still be under-appreciated for it. He has done a magnificent job doing something that no Chelsea manager has done in recent years. He reclaimed the dressing room from the doldrums of player power, as well as found a way to integrate the youth in a productive and yet protected manner. Forza Conte and Forza Chelsea.