N’Golo Kante’s continued injury makes Chelsea’s tactical planning difficult

Chelsea’s N’Golo Kante finally returned to training only to be sent back to London from Japan. The injury makes tactical planning difficult.

With Eden Hazard’s departure, Chelsea has only one truly world class player left at the club: N’Golo Kante. But the Frenchman is still dealing with the injury he got from being rushed back too soon from another injury last season. He had been training again, finally, but he has now been sent back to London to recuperate further.

This set back does not hurt Chelsea only now. It is likely that he will be fit enough to play in the season proper but new Chelsea manager Frank Lampard would like to experiment around Kante before the results matter. Lampard has been experimenting with various formations but the experiments are all incomplete without the center piece that is Kante.

This is not a “play Kante in his best position” idea because it has already been established that it does not matter much. Kante should be the first name on the team sheet every time. But where he does play affects others and that is where Lampard would like to run his experiments.

So far, Lampard has tended to favor the 4-2-3-1. Kante would surely play in the pivot, but who he partners with will remain an open question. The knee jerk reaction would be Jorginho but Jorginho is not the type to drive from deep. Would Kante be tasked with that in the pair or would he simply sweep up loose balls? Or if Kante’s partner is Mateo Kovacic, would Kante have to stay back to cover for his runs or could he join in on attacks himself?

Without Kante, Jorginho and Kovacic have been playing in the pivot together and it has worked pretty well (the formation has struggled in other areas more than the pivot). But Lampard would not leave Kante out so one of those two would need to drop.

The other formation Lampard has played with has been the 4-diamond-2. That allowed Jorginho to stay in a regista like position as the press shielded him. Kovacic played a deeper role more focused on through balls whereas Mason Mount played more of a box to box role. Kante could theoretically play in either role but he could also play as a holder at the base of the diamond. Lampard cannot really play with the ideas around it without Kante present.

Any formation or tactic Lampard plays with this preseason is incomplete without Kante’s presence. He is simply Chelsea’s best player and wherever and however he is used will have knockdown effects for others in the team. Without Kante, Lampard will only have an idea of how things work, not an actual knowledge of the full picture. Lampard’s an incredibly smart manager and has shown tactical sense, but all that could change simply with Kante on the field.

The French midfielder needs to focus on getting fit before anything else. Hopefully he will be ready to go in time for Reading so Lampard can start seeing the full picture before Manchester United.