Chelsea: Using David Luiz at the base of midfield would help several problems

Chelsea are looking for a replacement for Cesc Fabregas while most in need of another option at the base of midfield. Using David Luiz in that role would address several tactical and squad management problems.

There are barely enough asterisks, if’s and but’s to discuss David Luiz’s effectiveness as a centre-back. He is the ultimate “system” player, inasmuch as a robust system must be in place to optimize his moments of creativity and instinct while mitigating his regular indiscipline, inattention and dear-god-did-he-really-just-do-that-no-please-why moments. Antonio Conte solved the problem by embedding Luiz in a three-man backline with some of the most conservative defenders in the game: Gary Cahill, Cesar Azpilicueta and Andreas Christensen.

In a possession-oriented team playing a four-man defence, the best place for Luiz is one of his original positions at Chelsea. Call it what you like depending on the combination of position and function: defensive midfielder, destroyer, regista, deep-lying playmaker. To translate it into Sarrismo terms, the Jorginho role.

Jorginho has been one of Chelsea’s weak links in the last few months. Generously, he is accumulating fatigue. He has played over 2,000 minutes in three competitions in his first Premier League season. The style of play combined with the fixture congestion of the festive period is a new stimulus, and he has little time to rest and adapt.

Less generously and more importantly, Chelsea’s opponents have figured him out. Starting with Manchester United on October 20, Chelsea’s opponents up and down the table have come up with new ways to minimize his influence on the game. Some of those opponents recognized, as well, that they could not only take him out of the game but they could use him against Chelsea.

His predictability has become his biggest liability. As Travis Tyler argued recently here, he is just pulling levers on the assembly machine, and everyone always knows what he will do next.

David Luiz’s biggest liability, on the other hand, is his unpredictability. That is a fatal and unacceptable quality in a centre-back but it is exactly what Chelsea are missing at the base of their midfield.

Luiz has already started picking up the slack for Jorginho when the opposition marks the Italian out of the game. Over the first 11 Premier League games of the season, Jorginho averaged 25 passes more than Luiz in each game. Matchday 12 was the home fixture against Everton, who employed the most effective and sophisticated counter-Jorginho tactics to date. The Toffees erased Jorginho so effectively, Maurizio Sarri finished the job by withdrawing him in the 64′: the earliest of only three times Jorginho has come off.

Since the Everton game, the gap in average number of passes between the two players has dropped to four. Luiz had more passes than Jorginho against Chelsea’s two best opponents in that span, Manchester City and Tottenham.

As I will discuss later this week, number of passes is a pretty vapid metric to assess a player’s quality. But for the purposes of understanding shifting roles within a relatively rigid system, it usefully illuminates how the squad are adapting. Notably, they are adapting the system to cover for Jorginho at the base of the midfield: precisely what we said usually needs to be done with David Luiz at centre-back.

Luiz has enough of the qualities of Jorginho and Cesc Fabregas to play the role. He has the quick one-touch passing necessary to keep Sarrismo moving and build the play out from the back. As he demonstrated just a few days ago, he also has the Fabregas-esque vision and execution to disguise a pass one way and send a perfect 50-yard pass to a winger running in behind the lines.

Luiz is also willing – as we all know from numerous heart-in-mouth moments – to leave his post and follow the play (or his heart) around the pitch. Chelsea’s midfield has looked its best in recent months when Cesc Fabregas played and moved into the open pockets of space behind the forwards to find the best angle on passes into the box.

N’Golo Kante and Cesar Azpilicueta, in particular, are perfectly suited to drop deep to cover such a move by the deep midfielder. That movement by a Fabregas / Luiz-style midfielder also attracts defenders, creating space for the attacking midfielder and wingers. The Blues do not have this rotation with Jorginho at the base of the midfield because he is almost always, literally, at the base of the midfield.

David Luiz has one final advantage over Jorginho: as easy as it is to forget, he is a defender. Much of the conversation around N’Golo Kante’s new role is how exposed Chelsea’s defence are. This is as much about Jorginho as it is Kante, as Jorginho does not even provide cosmetic cover to the back-line. Having Luiz in the space just above the centre-backs would particularly address Chelsea’s perennial deficiency of balls splitting the centre-backs, Luiz included. Luiz’s aerial abilities in this position could help close off this avenue of attack that has ended with so many goals against the Blues.

Shifting Luiz to the regista / deep-lying playmaker / destroyer / Jorginho / defensive midfielder role would give Jorginho a chance to rest, allow another centre-back (Andreas Christensen or Ethan Ampadu) to come into the XI and would address several tactical issues. Even if Chelsea buy Leandro Paredes or Nicolo Barella, Maurizio Sarri will not bring them into the lineup for at least several weeks, if not months.

If Chelsea are going to be a team of stop-gaps, they might as well use one they already have.