Chelsea have conceded three more goals than Crystal Palace, while scoring 15 more. Keep your eyes on the final thirds in both directions at Stamford Bridge.
The usual depleted Chelsea squad welcome their former captain and near-legend Gary Cahill back to Stamford Bridge on Saturday. What he brings Crystal Palace is some of what the Blues need the most.
1. Chelsea face a well-structured defense. Again.
Crystal Palace, much like Newcastle, can be very organised in defense when they want to be. This is not to say they never concede three or four goals in a match – simply that more often than not, they won’t.
They have a veteran in Gary Cahill, who played with Chelsea for so long that he won it all. While Cahill will be facing a different Chelsea than the ones he played with, he has gathered enough experience to know what to do against relatively inexperienced attackers.
Chelsea barely won against Newcastle thanks to a Marcos Alonso strike, but Crystal Palace pose a more worrying threat. They have more experienced players and they have two players in Patrick Van Aanholt and Cahill who will want to prove a point against their former team. They also have Wilfried Zaha; and Luka Milevojevic, can pick out a decisive pass and is good at set pieces.
This all adds up to Crystal Palace being difficult to break down while also having enough players who know how to exploit sloppiness.
2. Defending corners and set pieces
Gary Cahill. Cahill is the reason Chelsea need to be at the top of their game, especially when defending corners against Palace.
Cahill has a bullet header on him and Crystal Palace have capable suppliers. Kurt Zouma will most certainly be tasked with marking Cahill, but even that does not inspire the utmost confidence.
Crystal Palace will not get many chances from open play so they’ll look to set pieces, from anywhere on the pitch, to attack Chelsea. The Blues’ season-long disarray in defending set pieces suggests this would not be a bad tactic by Roy Hodgson.
Dealing with height is not all, though. Communication across the back line needs to improve as well. Tammy Abraham’s own goal on Tuesday night was an example of miscommunication (or an absence of communication altogether). The goalkeeper and the defenders need to organise the rest of the team in set pieces.
Chelsea will most likely use zonal marking again because they have no other option. They only have three players above 6 feet in the starting XI. Two, if you remove Marcos Alonso, whom Frank Lampard probably will remove. Fikayo Tomori is exactly 6′. In that list of six-footers, Tammy Abraham has already scored two own goals when defending set pieces this season, so he is not particularly a defensive option.
Chelsea have to be smarter when defending set pieces. Things become messy if Chelsea’s opponents are guaranteed free goals whenever they have set pieces because height.