Chelsea: Jamie Vardy led the latest way to use Jorginho, Luiz against the Blues

Leicester are the latest mid-table team to usurp Chelsea’s structure and tactics easily and efficiently by targeting Jorginho. Jamie Vardy occupied a single passing lane, and the Blues were off the rails.

After the first few games of mid-table opponents focussing their disruption efforts on Jorginho, it looked like Maurizio Sarri would be in a season-long cat-and-mouse game with his peers. Then Tottenham dismantled the entire Jorginho-centric system. Chelsea muddled through games against PAOK, Fulham and Wolves before the win against Manchester City suggested the beginning of a post-Jorginho world, one where he is important cog but not singularly vital to the structure or system of the team.

If that was ever the case, it was not on Saturday. Leicester City gave Jamie Vardy a simple instruction whenever Chelsea had the ball in their defensive third or the midfield third: block the pass lane from David Luiz to Jorginho.

Vardy made very few pressing runs towards Chelsea’s centre-backs or Kepa Arrizabalaga. The few times he charged towards Arrizabalaga would be if Chelsea made a nearly horizontal pass to their goalkeeper with 15 yards or so of the touchline. Otherwise, Vardy allowed the centre-backs to hold on to the ball, and took away Luiz’s ability to pass it to Jorginho.

Claude Puel knew that Chelsea’s midfielders will not drop deep to give the defenders an alternative to Jorginho to play the ball out from the back. Jorginho is the only central option, which normally requires the wingers to drop deep to support the full-backs when they receive the ball.

But Puel also knew – as everyone should by now – that he could easily draw Luiz out by letting the Blues move up-field. The Foxes shifted their press in the middle third, letting Chelsea’s wingers move forward. They denied Luiz the simple, straight-forward pass to Jorginho to start Chelsea moving up field by the book. Then they gave him the opportunity to do something overblown and spectacular.

Never one to disappoint the opposition, Luiz did just that. He completed just nine passes to Jorginho on Saturday and 10 to his same-side full-back Marcos Alonso. He completed eight passes to the far-side touchline to either Willian or Cesar Azpilicueta .

Luiz was as likely to spray a long diagonal pass to the far-side touchline as he was to make a horizontal pass to his same-side full-back or the usual midfield outlet, Jorginho. While many fans will ooh and ahh over these long passes, they are the exact Plan B Maurizio Sarri does not want his side falling back upon. His reasons for this are mostly dogmatic, but Leicester showed the pragmatic effects of Luiz’s reflexive improvisation.

Claude Puel also knew that if Chelsea bring down the ball on the wing in the offensive third, it will likely stay there. Circumventing Jorginho at the beginning of the play means Chelsea skip a few steps in their build-up, landing them high and wide with no rhythm and nowhere to go. The pass from Luiz to Willian kicks off the endless and pointless U-shaped passing that once earned slack-jawed admiration but now is rightly derided as “tiki-taka” (a term Pep Guardiola hates, for good reason – he associates it with what we have seen this season).

Once Chelsea had the ball in the final third, Jamie Vardy would drop deep into Leicester’s defensive set-up. At that point, the danger had passed. There was no risk of Jorginho pinging quick passes with the midfielders and forwards as Chelsea moved up the field. If the ball came to Jorginho, he would shuttle it from one side to the next or maybe back towards the centre-backs. Leicester’s defensive shape became Chelsea’s passing shape.

Vardy’s positioning reflected Puel’s threat assessment of Chelsea. High up the pitch, the Blues have little vertical movement – either passing or runs – that could penetrate the Foxes’ defensive. From Leicester’s perspective, Jorginho is almost the ideal player to have on the ball. They know he will go short and sideways. The Foxes had no issue standing off him.

Forty yards earlier, as part of a counter-attack or build-up, those short, sideways passes set the stage for Eden Hazard, Pedro and Willian (in theory) to run through a scattered and retreating Leicester defence. Even if the initial quick move does not come off, the Blues would enter the final third with their passing and movement rhythm in full swing.

The simplicity of Leicester’s counter-Jorginho’s tactics is almost insulting. On the other hand, how Puel synthesized his tactical and psychological understanding of Chelsea’s midfield, wingers, Jorginho and David Luiz to find such a simple solution is fully commendable.

Chelsea’s next three opponents are the sort of mid-table teams who will add to the compendium of sometimes elegant (Everton), sometimes less so (Brighton) ways  to put Chelsea off their Sarrismo. Two of the three – Watford and Southampton – have coaches who are making significant tactical contributions to the Premier League without the fanfare of the top-six. The third – Crystal Palace – just defeated Manchester City, have a perennially under-appreciated manager and have spoiled numerous Chelsea seasons.

Maurizio Sarri professed dismay about how the final 40 minutes of the game came to be. The predictability and frustration of the first half are among the root causes of the disunity of the second. A system where two players can be used against their team to such effect cannot expect any better results.