Chelsea talking tactics: Jose Mourinho is sliding into his old ways

Jose Mourinho is already starting to slip from his early facade at Tottenham. What does that mean for Frank Lampard and Chelsea?

It remains incredibly weird to say Jose Mourinho is the Tottenham manager. Furthermore, given where they are in the table, it remains a surprise that not too many seem to be paying close attention to them. Even Mourinho seems to be on his best behavior.

That facade is slipping however. As the injuries pile up and Tottenham falters occasionally, the Mourinho of Manchester United comes out a small fragments. Mourinho, for all his time off and proclamations of change, is still himself.

So Chelsea should more or less know what to expect. Frank Lampard got the upper hand over his former boss last time, but Mourinho rarely lets himself get beat tactically twice in a season. Chelsea will need to pull out something special.

The injuries have forced Mourinho to play around with formations far more than he used to, but 4-2-3-1 is still his primary pick. Like he normally uses it, one full back will stay deep with the center backs and one other will go up high and wide. One winger will tuck in and another will stay wide to create almost a 3-5-2 sort of shape offensively.

Tottenham is attacking much more rapidly and with more width than they had been in Mauricio Pochettino’s final days. Perhaps Mourinho’s greatest accomplishment on that front is freeing up Dele Alli in a way that he has not been for years now, bringing the best back out of him as he roams the center.

Defensively, instead of pressing as aggressively as they would under Pochettino, they now look to contain like a Mourinho team. That does tend to make them somewhat narrow and vulnerable in the wide areas, but overall the results have improved for Tottenham.

But Mourinho does still have one blind spot: back three formations. For whatever reason, his teams have seemed to struggle with any back three set up since Antonio Conte made them cool again. That was how Lampard and Chelsea got the drop on him last time. Julian Nagelsmann also just used a 3-5-2 to cause the same types of issues in the Champions League.

The only time Mourinho seems to be able to overcome a back three is if he has his team match it with their own or go into his super defensive, countering 6-2-2 shape (which is really just an extremely defensive version of a 4-4-2).

Given Chelsea’s recent struggles, Lampard would be wise to use a 3-4-3 as that has stopped the rot before this season. But on the other hand, Mourinho may be expecting that and adjust. This could easily turn into a back and forth game of trying to out tactic one another.

With both sides injury ravaged, it is truly hard to tell what to expect from this one tactically or otherwise. Both managers will know a win is all but required for Champions League goals, so it may simply come down to which manager can motivate his battered team better.