Chelsea: Four lessons learned from tight draw with Sevilla

3. There’s nothing wrong with not pressing

What if Chelsea isn’t actually a terrible defensive team, but simply a terrible pressing team? The Blue’s staunch defensive performance against Sevilla suggests that this might be the case.

Julen Lopetegui’s instruction to his players was clear from the first whistle: press, press, press, get to every ball first, and press some more. To say they achieved this would be an understatement, and Chelsea spent the first ten minutes simply holding on for dear life. It made for tough viewing, but the Blues slowly came to grips with their role as the underdogs.

Ironically, that immediate onslaught might have solved the Blues’ biggest defensive problems. After all, Chelsea’s most disastrous performances usually begin with early dominance, followed by slowly losing control of the match, and end by imploding entirely. See the Southampton match for evidence of this.

The secret to solving this puzzle might just be to never dominate in the first place. That’s certainly what happened on Tuesday. At no point were the Blues in the ascendency, and yet Sevilla failed to create more than a couple of truly dangerous chances. People more intelligent than me can break down the specific tactical matchups that led to Chelsea’s much-needed clean sheet, but the gist of it is simple: by being forced onto the back foot right away, the usual press was never set up. Therefore, it couldn’t be ripped through at will by the opposition. It sounds like a joke, but that’s pretty much how things played out.

Chalk it up to youth, a lack of familiarity, or simply poor tactics, but Chelsea just can’t succeed as an out-and-out pressing side right now. The smart road forward looks like it might be a bit Mourinho-y; the original, fun Mourinho, to be specific. There can be excellent attacking play, but it’s built on the foundation of an entrenched, dedicated defensive structure. The first season-plus under Lampard has seen Chelsea attempt to defend from the front, and the results have conclusively proven that to be a problematic strategy. Especially in a season where goals are free-flowing and defensive solidity is at a premium, a move towards a defensively-based structure wouldn’t be the worst idea in the world. Tuesday showed that it can be a viable strategy for keeping aggressive and potent teams off the scoresheet. Chelsea will face plenty of those this season, and this could very well serve as the blueprint for securing important results.