The Community Shield did not help Alvaro Morata’s confidence nor reputation at Chelsea. But any striker would have languished with the lack of service and play towards the No. 9 position.
Alvaro Morata switched his jersey number from 9 to 29, both to celebrate the birth of his twins and to move out from under the expectations of the centre-forward’s traditional signifier. Unfortunately for him, Chelsea could not change their tactics as quickly or as easily as he changed numbers. In the Community Shield, Chelsea’s disjointed tactics and ball movement marooned Morata, leaving him with no goals but plenty of misplaced blame for a weak showing.
Chelsea are still in transition from Antonio Conte’s tactics to Maurizio Sarri’s. Conte would have the wing-backs, particularly Marcos Alonso, send crosses repeatedly into the box for the striker to latch onto. Cesar Azpilicueta found greater joy with Morata than either wing-back, benefitting from Chelsea’s wide play to find the passing lane from the right midfield half-space to Morata’s head. The Blues had three passing lanes converging on the centre-forward to varying amounts of success, in addition to whatever Eden Hazard and the other winger could create.
Maurizio Sarri has Chelsea playing much more narrowly, with most ball movement coming up the middle and without anyone in a position to send in a cross. When the Blues are fully functioning under Sarri’s tactics, this will lead to through-balls towards Morata or diagonal balls in from the wingers.
But in the Community Shield, Chelsea did not know how to find their striker. Of course, facing Manchester City did not make the task any easier.
Jorginho, as he did under Sarri at Napoli, controlled the tempo and direction of the game in the midfield. But there will almost always be one person between Jorginho and the centre-forward. For all of his passes last season (the most among the Big 5 leagues), Jorginho had only four assists, tying his career high.
He is the metronome, but he does not deliver the final pass. For that, Napoli relied on their wingers, Lorenzo Insigne and Jose Callejon (11 and 10 Serie A assists last season, respectively). Chelsea did not have any such final ball from Pedro or Callum Hudson-Odoi.
Jorginho’s fellow midfielders were not able to make the connection either, not even Cesc Fabregas, who should be able to find the striker under any circumstances. Perhaps once N’Golo Kante returns to the lineup and Fabregas can focus his play forward instead of covering defensive duties, he will be able to link with Morata. But Chelsea must learn how to either spread the play enough to create passing lanes for Fabregas and the others, or look for ways to create from tight spaces against narrow defences.
Eden Hazard’s return will go a long ways on both needs. He will draw defenders out of position, creating the space for Barkley or Fabregas to open up for a pass into Morata, assuming Hazard does not drive in himself. If Hazard dribbles in for the shot, he will create the second-ball opportunities for the striker. However, Olivier Giroud and Michy Batshuayi have better records with those chances than Alvaro Morata.
Chelsea and Alvaro Morata are used to crosses being the main service to the striker, but they are shifting towards a tactical system that does not lend itself to crosses. If Maurizio Sarri wanted to adapt his tactics to Alonso and Morata, he could make a few tweaks to his usual system.
Sarri often has one fullback play more forward than the other. Cesar Azpilicueta is the obvious choice to stay deeper, and Marcos Alonso’s strengths are best used by coming forward. On the surface, this could be an easy solution to bring Alonso into crossing position on overlapping runs.
But Chelsea’s defence must become much stronger before Alonso can go too far forward. Alonso’s greatest liability is still his pace. The consequences of not tracking back if the ball gets past him will be harsher than ever with only two centre-backs behind him, particularly if one of them is David Luiz. Alonso may not be able to move as far forward as he would like to send crosses towards Morata because of his defensive responsibilities. Emerson is much faster than Alonso and could cover back more effectively, but he is not as strong with his crosses. The overall narrowness of Chelsea’s play would also make it easy for the opposition to come out and close down Alonso, preventing or blocking the cross.
Chelsea would need a more significant change to the 4-3-3, then, if they want Alonso to have the option to cross to Morata. This is highly unlikely given Sarri’s adherence to the 4-3-3 at his previous two clubs. He accepts a certain amount of openness on defence to achieve his openness on the attack. Sarri is more likely to adapt the finer points of the tactics to the system and the players will have to adapt to those tactics. This means training the players to find new routes towards the striker. Jorginho will start the build-ups through the other midfielders, who must then find the wingers to create options for themselves, including the pass to the striker.
This will have consequences for Marcos Alonso and what he brings to the XI. But it will place much more responsibility on Chelsea’s wingers and attacking midfielder. Pedro, Willian, Callum Hudson-Odoi, Ross Barkley, Cesc Fabregas, Ruben Loftus-Cheek (hopefully) and Danny Drinkwater (it’s come to this) will have a new dimension in their respective battles for the starting XI. If they cannot serve Alvaro Morata or whoever else is up front, Sarri will replace them with someone who can.
The No. 9 jersey is like the No. 1 jersey. Those players take the blame even when it is not their fault. Whether Chelsea’s centre-forward is wearing 9, 29, 18 or 23, if the players around him do not adapt to Maurizio Sarri’s system the results will look very similar to Alvaro Morata’s on Sunday.