Chelsea three things to look for against Barnsley: Rotation and practice

Chelsea hosts Championship side Barnsley in the League Cup midweek. What should Blues fans look for in the clash against the Yorkshire club?

With all due respect to Barnsley, most haven’t exactly been keeping tabs on the Tykes this season. Chelsea, on the other hand, fans have been tuning in for, so the focus will be on the Blues here.

1. Rotation and formations

A cup match against lower league opposition is essentially code for “second team runout.” That certainly can come back to bite teams who try to phone it in against the minnows, but the opportunity to rest some legs and try out the backups is just too enticing for managers to pass up on.

For better or worse, that’s almost certainly what Frank Lampard will do on Wednesday. This Chelsea squad is still weeks away from having a clean bill of health, but the likes of Tammy Abraham, Ross Barkley and Ruben Loftus-Cheek should be in line to get a start here. There’s even a hint of a chance that Callum Hudson-Odoi will be called in from whatever wilderness locale Frank Lampard has banished him to. One only has to look as far as the predicted XI’s many are suggesting to see just how interesting things could be.

Whoever does play, the real trick on Lampard’s part will be to crowbar them all into something approaching a coherent formation. Chelsea’s amorphous array of attacking options is great in theory, but it’s still just that: amorphous. Whatever sense of choreography or telepathic understanding this forward unit aims to have is still way, way, way down the road. Against Barnsley, Lampard will likely draw on a more limited set of attacking players, so their success will depend largely on how they’re organized on the field.

A 4-2-3-1 makes the most sense considering the likely options, but it may be overly defensive given the opposition. An ambitious 4-2-4 makes sense too if Olivier Giroud can combine up top with Abraham, but that seems a bit too exotic for Lampard. In all likelihood, Chelsea will be able to dominate proceedings enough that things could end up looking like the classic 2-3-5 of the olden days. All gas, no brakes.

In the Premier League, consistency is key. At the moment, Chelsea is the furthest thing from consistent. While that’s not ideal in the long term, unpredictability can work in the cup competitions. So long as Lampard’s side doesn’t slide past unpredictable towards incoherent, things should work out fine no matter who is out there.