Chelsea lost to Manchester United less due to individual errors and more due to tactical hiccups. Of course, hindsight makes that easy to say.
One of the biggest tests for any managers is knowing when to stick or twist. When something is working very well, at what point is it acceptable to start making tweaks before someone finds a counter to it? When is it too early to mess with a winning formula? These things can plague a manager in part because the correct decision is really only known in hindsight.
It is perfectly understandable why Frank Lampard stuck with the 4-3-3/4-2-3-1 formation he had been using. It is also understandable why he rotated the players he did and while Lampard may call the squad different rather than weakened, it was just that. It would even be understandable for him to stick with what just worked for seven wins in a row given the changes to the squad could have had a greater effect over the result.
But it is still worth looking at how things went wrong for the team against United. Because even though it was a rotated side, the issues could easily plague the full strength one as well. And for Lampard, that will be worth considering before it becomes a known factor in hindsight.
Most of the problems stemmed from Manchester United’s 3-5-2/3-4-3. Ole Gunnar Solskjaer has been using the formation recently to help further stabilize United, but it also makes them prone to bunker down (through their own choice or not) and stuck countering. Of course, against Chelsea in their current shape, that works.
The main issue came with how Chelsea wants to build up. The Blues’ wingers are not wingers in the strictness sense because of how often they are tasked with tucking in to allow the fullback the wing. That generally allows for overloads on one side or central before Chelsea sends the ball into a released player elsewhere.
Defending in a 5-3-2 stifles that. The middle is incredibly clogged which forced the wingers to actually stay wide. There, the wing backs could mark them one on one or simply back off. Regardless, it forced Callum Hudson-Odoi and Christian Pulisic into non threatening areas during build up. Furthermore, because they were vacating the center and Chelsea generally likes to build up through the wide areas with the help of central players making rotations, the Blues were trapped in the dreaded U shaped passing pattern.
In theory, the work around would have been to more fully switch to a 4-2-3-1 shape. But a midfield of Billy Gilmour, Jorginho, and Mateo Kovacic lacks balance. Jorginho and Gilmour both wanted the same spaces and had the same ideas. Kovacic also likes those spaces to start his dribbles from. So Chelsea had three players more or less tripping over each other with no one adding the forward thinking that was needed.
The midfield lacking balance would not have been an issue in of itself had the wingers not been forced into the wide areas that they were. Antonio Conte’s 4-3-3 faced similar issues with lacking a central presence to progress through and the 3-4-3/3-4-2-1 coped by pushing the wingers into the areas that Lampard already wants his own wingers. But again, the 5-3-2 defensive shape forced them wide and because the midfield was not able to release them, it all became very bogged down.
Furthermore, Michy Batshuayi had no good solutions. If he stayed in the box, he was up against three center backs with no support. If he roamed wide to rotate with a winger, the winger simply faced the same issue. In general, an attack can be effective when it is on a one man under load to the opposition defense. A solution would have been to add another striker to better cope with the back line while also keeping the midfield matched or outnumbered. Rather than sticking to the 4-3-3/4-2-3-1 all match, a move to a 4-diamond-2 or a 3-5-2 would have been a better solution.
It should therefore not be all that surprising that Chelsea surged back into the game when United changed their formation with the double sub. United went to a 4-3-3/4-2-3-1 themselves to seek a goal, but that turned their advantage of five versus three into a much harder battle of four versus three.
Outside of tactics, the issue Chelsea ran into after the second goal was a loss of composure. Pedro gave away the free kick that led to the goal and then he set the tone for the remainder of the match with his first action(s) being a lot of one touch passing that led to nowhere. Chelsea as a whole then acted that out as they tried to force something to happen. That is understandable from a young squad, but the control they had over proceedings before the free kick went in was lost.
Again, all of this is easy to see in hindsight and just because Solskjaer solved Lampard’s Chelsea on the day does not mean it would have happened against a stronger side or that another team could copy the playbook and do the same. It is also worth mentioning that had Chelsea one, most of these issues would not need to be highlighted at all. Again, hindsight is 20/20 in cases like this.
Two individual mistakes led to two goals. But Chelsea lost the game themselves by failing to recognize the early deficiencies in the first half to hour. Even with a changed line up, the game was there to be won. It is hardly a disaster that it was not and some of the doom and gloom over some of the players is over the top. But going forward, Lampard does need to keep an eye on days like this and his own role in it. He made no mistakes to fall into these traps, but fell into them he did nonetheless. It is a learning experience for coach and players as they look to right the ship against Watford.