Maurizio Sarri’s tactics have been implemented quickly at Stamford Bridge. But he sees constant issues with Chelsea’s defensive phase.
Football comes in four phases: defensive, transition to defense, transition to offense, and offense. Some will use possession in place of offense but the idea is largely the same and mostly accepted.
A new manager’s job is to come in and bring the new club on board for all four phases as quickly as possible. At various stages, Maurizio Sarri’s Chelsea has struggled in each of the four phases. But in recent matches, only one has been catching the manager’s eye.
After almost every game this season, Sarri has said Chelsea needs to improve in the defensive phase. The Blues have conceded four goals which is the third best rate in the league. The two teams challenging for the title are ahead of them and at least one has had more difficult opponents. Sarri wants to see improvement in this phase most of all as all four of those goals were preventable.
To understand what Sarri means, it helps to look at how he sets the defense up. One of the most notable features is how incredibly narrow the back four plays. Rarely do they extend longer than the length of the box and when they do it is to activate a pressing trap. The narrowness of the defense helps to prevent through balls through the players and central attacks, but it leaves the team open on the flanks.
Theoretically, the press between the midfielders and the fullbacks should see the ball won back in wide areas if it was not won in the initial press. But if the press fails, Chelsea opens themselves up to crosses. Arsenal’s goals took the greatest advantage of this feature.
Tied into the narrowness of defense is the zonal defending. It is not a pure zonal defending system because no one in the world does that anymore. But there is a clear difference between Sarri’s defensive phase and the more man oriented one Antonio Conte implemented.
Zonal marking runs into trouble when the player gets stuck between two decisions: stay in the zone or come out to win the ball. If it looks like a player was “caught” and is a step behind the defender, it is because they should have left the zone to attack the ball. The Newcastle goal came in part because of this.
The last pillar of Sarri’s defense is the offside trap. Most who played football on any level understand the offside trap. The entire defense takes a step up to play a player offside as the ball is passed or they simply leave the player unmarked in an offside position (usually of the defensive teams making). The narrow defense allows this to work better because communication is easier. The zonal defensive nature could play into it as well depending on how the zones have been set up by Sarri.
But the issue with the offside trap is that it relies heavily on the linesman to A: get the call right and B: the team to give the linesman enough to work with. If the team trying the trap cannot make it look offside, then the trap becomes a free one on one shot. The Cardiff goal came from an offside trap collapsing and allowing a free shot on goal.
Sarri is seeing these issues but they are not easy to fix. Part of it will be familiarity both with the other players and the system itself. But at some point, Sarri may grow tired of the current back four slipping up.
Antonio Rudiger and Cesar Azpilicueta have been the two least at fault for the collapse of one or more of the defensive phase’s tenets. Marcos Alonso has been guilty of leaving the narrow defense and of leaving his zone too soon. David Luiz has been guilty of triggering the trap too soon as well as staying in his zone when he should have attacked the ball. The former has shown improvement and has nearly eliminated the issues. The latter is having at least one issue per game.
Sarri is likely to continue working with the current back four for a few more weeks. But if Andreas Christensen or Ethan Ampadu shows up well in the cups, the manager may decide a change is in order. Sarri has been patient but that starts to run thin after seeing the same thing five matches in a row. He wants improvements but how much longer will he wait for the current crop to make them?