Thomas Tuchel rolled out a disjointed team of Chelsea players that had barely played together for the Carabao Cup fixture. This is not really a criticism either because Tuchel mentioned ahead of time that he’d use this opportunity to hand out minutes to those who haven’t had much of it this season, which makes sense.
In the lineup was Malang Sarr, who has not made an appearance this season yet. Ben Chilwell, whose only other appearance this season was a 12 minute cameo against Zenit in the Champions league. Ruben Loftus-Cheek, who’s only other appearance this season was a one minute cameo against Zenit in the champions League. Saul, who had to be hauled off at half time against Aston Villa a week ago. Timo Werner, who has only played 28 minutes of football this season, other than the Super Cup game and Callum Hudson-Odoi, who has only played 82 minutes against Aston Villa in the league.
This gives an insight as to the kind of team that was fielded. It was heavily populated by players who had not played many minutes, combined with some fringe players who had sights on breaking into the first team. The team, should therefore have been expected to lack chemistry, which it did. The problem is that the discourse around the team and some of the players is as though this is a team that has played together often and should be more organized than this. That ignores reality.
“Competition for places” is a phrase thrown around a lot. In reality what this means is that players like Callum Hudson-Odoi who has been looking in from the sidelines, will go above and beyond to do spectacular things to impress the manager when he does play. It was obvious every time the ball came to Hudson-Odoi’s feet that he wasn’t content to just keep play moving. This is to be expected as well. Hudson-Odoi feels the need to impress the manager because he doesn’t see where his next minutes will come from, this is unfortunately what happens when players are given very few chances to “fight for their places”, they have to do in 90 minutes (often less), what their colleagues are able to do in several matches combined, to displace whoever is ahead of them.
Combining that with the fact that the front three – whoever those were – had not played together much, meant that many Blues fans should have expected that first half they saw. Excuses were made for Mason Mount and Kai Havertz in the Liverpool away fixture when they failed to pick out easy passes to put their teammates through on goal, these excuses where along the lines of “they haven’t played together much, the final ball will improve the more they play together”, this is surprising because yesterday’s match is actually where that excuse fits, yet no such excuse has been made.
The time needed to get used to each other was obvious as the second half was much better than the first in terms of fluidity. Yes, sometimes players need as much as 45 minutes playing together before things can begin to flow, of course the reason that’s not satisfactory is because any number of things can happen in the 45 minutes they’re trying to get their act together. The game could’ve been away from them by then.
The expectation that because these players are elite, playing against an Aston Villa side that “they should be dominating”, doesn’t take into account the fact that a glaring lack of chemistry means no fluidity in attack and midfield. Fringe players getting minutes means they’d want to show why they shouldn’t be on the bench and should be trusted to start, and players who haven’t gotten minutes at all finally playing means they’d be rusty and would be out of pace with the game for a little bit. In reality the team that Tuchel deployed should have been expected to take some time to form any kind of fluidity.