Chelsea Tactics and Transfers: Blues standing still as league races forward

Chelsea FC drew with Everton in a frustrating and ultimately rather boring match.  Unfortunately, it laid bare a culmination of the fears many had this summer: Chelsea remained the same team they were last season while others progressed.

Last season Chelsea would have had their way with Everton and it would have been an exciting match for many supporters. Each and every of the Santa hat wearing Blues who traveled north to Liverpool to watch the match would have left the ground as happy as can be. This time, though, they went home with an excellent example of exactly what is wrong at Stamford Bridge.

Chelsea made a massive mistake during the 2015 summer transfer market. They were so confident at having won the league the prior season they felt there was not a lot of need to strengthen. They made minor squad adjustments, but no massive improvements. That was a cardinal sin and a massive mistake.

Perhaps because of the money involved it is impossible to tread water in the Premier League. Teams like Everton, for instance, can afford to go out and spend over £100 million in a single summer. England is not like Spain, France or Germany. Those country’s leagues have such a big gap between the have’s and the have not’s that the measurable distance between the two camps can absorb a bit of growth.

This Everton match on Saturday was such a good case study because Everton are a club that made a remarkable number of changes to their side during the summer transfer window. The Blues, on the other hand, made deceptively few.

Must Read: Four things to look for as Chelsea host Brighton on Boxing Day

Though there are several new faces in Antonio Conte’s squad, most of them are like-for-like replacements: Tiemoue Bakayoko for Nemanja Matic. Alvaro Morata for Diego Costa. Antonio Rudiger for Kurt Zouma, and so forth.  The squad has not changed in size much despite playing in more competitions. The Blues style of play is wildly similar to what it was last season.

The squad would have more options if, for example, Costa (in this scenario he has a good attitude) could play up front beside Morata. Or if Matic and Bakayoko could control the area in front of the defence and allow N’Golo Kante the ability to press forward and initiate the high press. If those things were different, Chelsea would be in a different place. Chelsea found out this summer how to change a few faces while staying in the same place.

Manchester City simply added to their squad, and United did as well. They are both ahead of Chelsea in the table.  Tottenham, like Chelsea, made fairly few changes and they are five points and one place behind where they were last season, and they are also in the Champions League now.

Chelsea simply failed to evolve this season, and the Everton match showed it perfectly.

Chelsea beat Everton last season 5-0 and 3-0, respectively. An 8-0 taking of the season. They could not have been more dominant. Everton made up that difference substantially in the off-season. People will highlight how the Blues controlled the match and had many chances. They did. No doubt about it. But they didn’t score.

Must Read: First-team football not out of the question for Baba Rahman

Does the team play differently with Diego Costa making a muck of the Everton defence in place of the suspended Morata? Probably he does. Is it far easier for Chelsea to continue to press into the Everton half and control the game if both Matic and Bakayoko are there? For my money it does.

We must acknowledge both of those players wanted to leave, and on those grounds Chelsea were right to let them go. But they needed to do more than just replace them. They needed to build more. Simply staying in place with a one-for-one replacement was bad management. Chelsea should have brought in two midfielders and two strikers like Antonio Conte asked for, but they failed.

Thus it appears the team merely replaced players – it did not really build further on the foundation Conte built last season. The apparent one-out / one-in policy is the problem. If Chelsea had brought in Morata and, for instance, Andrea Bellotti they would be building and moving further up the ladder as opposed to staying in place. The Premier League is not a safe place to simply stay in place and tread water.

Michael Emenalo had to leave for reasons like this. Chelsea repeated too many mistakes while learning too little.  It’s impossible for them to achieve the heights they continue with these mistakes.

Next: Everton fully exposed Chelsea's need for a true target man striker

Chelsea versus Everton is a barometer series in 2017/18, and it shows exactly how far behind they are from last season.