Aston Villa is a well coached team and they nearly took a bite out of Chelsea. Were it not for the world class Edouard Mendy and friends, things would have been much worse for the Blues. But they held the line, Chelsea eventually steadied the ship, and the club ultimately earned a (somewhat flattering) 3-0 victory.
Still, nothing Villa really did was new under the sun. Chelsea fans should be well aware of what a good three at the back system looks like and what a poor one looks like. Antonio Conte’s Chelsea experienced both. Tuchel’s only come out good, but Villa showed even his formation can show common weaknesses.
The main issue against Villa came with the press. There really wasn’t one. Since joining, Romelu Lukaku has not been asked to be an aggressive presser. That’s not unusual. The two wide forwards, however, do need to put pressure on the ball. That’s where the first in a series of issues arose. Neither Kai Havertz nor Hakim Ziyech put enough into the opposition to cause them to make mistakes. Instead, both more often than not dropped back into a defensive shape.
That’s allowable in certain circumstances, but everyone has to be on the same page. Saul Niguez only just got the book and it showed. Now, please don’t do the extreme nonsensical thing and think he’s already done at Chelsea. But also don’t do the other extreme nonsensical thing and cover for him in every which way. He was bad. It happens. It’s understandable.
So much of Chelsea’s press is the waves it comes in. The forwards press. The wingbacks and centermids press. The wide centerbacks press if they can. But when one of those presses (in this case the forward one) falters, the others suffer. When two of them suffer, things can get bad.
Saul never looked comfortable getting far from Kovacic. He never really came out to put pressure on the ball, but at the same time, the forwards’ retreat didn’t give him a chance to. When they retreated, they made it much harder for the centermids not to do the same.
This in turn would affect the wingbacks who got stuck in two minds. Do they push forward to press a wide player, leaving a lot of space in behind? Do they fall back, allowing a lot of space ahead of them? Callum Hudson-Odoi suffered from this the most as Aston Villa, after getting through the two nonexistent lines of pressure, targeted the young Englishman. Smith’s side understood that Hudson-Odoi isn’t a natural defender, but they also understood his support was a new to the league Saul and a young and mostly untested yet Trevoh Chalobah. It seemed as almost every pass was coming in behind Hudson-Odoi and that’s because it kept working.
From there, it was good Mendy and Thiago Silva (as well as Chalobah and Antonio Rudiger) put in a shift. Conte’s Chelsea was built around the wide CBs having a spare man to win crosses of any kind and Tuchel’s, after the presses failed, had to do the same. They held up, but it was a close one far too many times.
The substitution of Jorginho solved one issue in that it gave Chelsea two centermids who understood when to press. Maybe this bolstered the forwards to do so more but more likely Tuchel gave them new instructions. This took the pressure off the wingbacks and the backline and while the second half wasn’t perfect, it at least featured far more control.
Three at the back has some common weaknesses like the gaps that are created around the wingbacks. Aston Villa tried to exploit that and largely succeeded. They would have had more to take away from the game were it not for some stellar performances at the back. The Blues held, steadied the ship, and soared.