N’Golo Kante is still a week away from fully training with the team. For the rest of the Chelsea squad, training and playing without him as been a valuable learning experience.
Any sort of training adaptation requires some kind of stress: running a particular intensity at higher volume, lifting heavier weights or performing increasingly complex movements. Similarly, one of the best ways learn is setting constraints on the environment someone is working in. In football, this can be marking off part of the pitch or using teams of different size (e.g., 4 v 3 plus two neutral players).
Chelsea have been dealing with both a stress and a constraint for the entire preseason: N’Golo Kante’s absence. If the other players can learn to play halfway decent football without Kante, Chelsea will be in a strong place when he returns to the XI.
One of Chelsea’s most noticeable weaknesses in preseason games, including Sunday against Reading, is transitioning to and recovering on defence. The Blues are playing a high, aggressive press. Players like Mason Mount are relentless in closing down the opponent’s defenders and goalkeepers. Mount and Michy Batshuayi, in particular, put themselves in the perfect position to capitalize on teams who inanely and self-sacrificially play out from the back, like Barcelona.
The risk of these presses is how much it leaves the team exposed through midfield. But the Blues have been caught flat-footed in less dramatic situations.
A turnover near the top of Chelsea’s final third can land the midfielders and full-backs a few steps off, leaving them chasing the play while the centrebacks and perhaps a deep-lying midfielder or full-back absorb the rush. It’s not the team aren’t diligent or motivated to defend – they’re just not making it back.
These issues become non-issues with N’Golo Kante in the lineup.
Kante does not get caught flat-footed or a few steps off. His positioning – particularly when he’s not being misused in the box-to-box role – precludes such moments and, if one somehow develops, he is quick enough to recover and harass the ball-carrier from behind to slow down the play.
With the way Chelsea have been playing under Frank Lampard so far this summer, Kante would likely stay behind the play, making himself the stable platform for the other midfielders and the full-backs to attack and press.
But without Kante in the lineup to do all these things, the team has to learn how to pick up the slack themselves. Although they have not always been successful, Kante’s absence forces them to track back harder and more quickly. They have to improve how they read the play and their opponent’s movements into the space that Kante would otherwise occupy and close off. Even if they do not always execute the quick decision and recovery run, they are learning those situations and will eventually recognize them before they develop.
Likewise, the other defensive midfielders are learning what it’s like to have full responsibility for shielding the centrebacks.
The midfield pairings are figuring out which midfielder will advance into the play to support on offence, join the press, disrupt counter-attacks and harass the ball-carrier while the other stays back to protect the defenders. N’Golo Kante can do either job impeccably well, and often does both in the course of a single run of play.
Given the emphasis Frank Lampard’s management style places on decision-making, the players are still coming to terms with these aspects of the game.
By the time N’Golo Kante returns, his teammates will be further down the learning curve of what it is like to play without him. They will have the tactical awareness to know when to start shifting back and when to start a full recovery run. They will have the conditioning necessary to stay ahead of the play, or at least catch up to it while they still have a chance to influence it. The midfielders will know how to work individually and together to protect the defence and connect the defence with the offence in both directions.
This will make Chelsea more coherent and complete when Kante returns, because these are some of the fundamental characteristics of a winning team. If the team learn a smooth and rapid transition to defence in Kante’s absence, with Kante in the lineup they can transition right back to offence even quicker. Kante will still get to the ball first and can play it right back to his teammates coming towards him. They can then turn the play back towards the opponent, who may now be out of position thinking they would be able to break out of their zone. And if not, they will be defending as a team, not as a gaggle leaning on a diminutive French superhero.
The Blues can get by short-changing some of these duties simply because they have N’Golo Kante (and they have in the past), but this lowers the ceiling on the team. If they pull their weight and cover tactically as though he wasn’t there when he is there, then everything special he adds pushes the team over the top.
Kante’s absence applied a stressor and a constraint to Lampard’s first month in charge. Whatever the team learns to do without him will only make them better when they have him back.