Chelsea struggled mightily in the opening minutes against Burnley, but tweaks and some controlled chaos led to the performance of the season.
The sense of dread in the opening 20 or so minutes was well earned. Sean Dyche’s men were set up perfectly to disrupt Chelsea. Maurizio Sarri’s squad was probably more lucky than not to weather that period without conceding.
Dyche knew Chelsea wanted to play out of the back. So he would have one striker on Jorginho and one on whichever centerback was free. This forced Chelsea to play the ball to the fullback who was then hounded by a winger. When the Blues could get out of their half through the quick flicks that worked, Burnley would pack it in and give Chelsea no avenue of approach.
The first tweak Sarri made to counteract this was to have the wingers drop deep and close to their fullback partner. Suddenly, Burnley’s wingers had to decide who to mark. This meant a player was either always open or the Burnley winger got stuck in two minds.
Sarri did not stop there however. Noticing that Burnley was not playing centrally, the wider midfielders (Ross Barkley and N’Golo Kante) started getting even wider. This created a simple passing triangle around the pressing Burnley wingers who had no hope of retrieving the ball. Slowly but surely, Burnley stopped pressing and got pushed farther and farther into their own half.
Pedro’s injury should have caused Chelsea issues considering there was no winger on the bench to take his spot. But Ruben Loftus-Cheek came on a sparked a controlled tactical chaos that ended Burnley’s hopes of sticking to their game plan.
To say Loftus-Cheek came on to play as a winger would be incorrect. To say he changed the formation would also be a bit incorrect. It would be incorrect because the midfield stopped being a solid shape and became a fluid formation.
The front six, minus the striker, had “base positions” for the sake of defense. But other than that they went wherever they wanted to. Sometimes a central player would go wide. Sometimes a wide player would drop deep and central. But every time another player would move to cover the vacated space. Burnley found this indefensible which is why they faded out of their furious opening salvo. They were pulled all out of sorts by the rotations and nearly every goal after the first came as a result of this confusion.
Alvaro Morata and Willian played their best games of the season. Loftus-Cheek and Barkley continued their fine form. Combined, they have given Sarri a serious selection issue. Especially since this was the best performance of the season and Eden Hazard was not involved.
Controlled tactical chaos worked wonders. It was perhaps the most Sarrismo that Chelsea has shown. And though Willian played a great game, it becomes very hard not to justify more playing time for Loftus-Cheek and Barkley.
If Sarri can put this performance in a bottle and repeat it, Chelsea will reach a new level. It might come at the cost of Willian/Pedro dropping to the bench, but adding Barkley or Loftus-Cheek to the formation seems to not only be doable but rewarding. It will be exciting to see if Sarri opts to do something similar soon.