Chelsea was not performing well when Thomas Tuchel came in, and also wasn’t performing well when he was sacked, but in addition to the defensive problems they had, were also attacking issues.
Chelsea’s attacking underperformance dates back to the week the German was appointed. CFC’s forwards never quite got going, with Tammy Abraham being the first casualty from his hire. Abraham was joint highest scorer in all competitions for the Blues when Tuchel arrived, but after giving him three starts and substituting him at halftime twice, Tuchel never looked Abraham’s way again that season, including in the FA Cup final, a competition in which Abraham was the top scorer. By the end of the season when the Blues won the Champions League, it was obvious that their defensive exploits had played a major role.
Chelsea’s attack never got up and running the following season either, having acquired Romelu Lukaku in what felt like the “needed signing” to finally challenge for the league. It was a criticism of Tuchel initially, that despite how well he’d made CFC look defensively, that he couldn’t get a tune out of the forwards. The longer it went on though, the more fans turned it into a criticism of the forwards. They grew irritated that the forwards had yet to hit any form under the new manager, and a large portion of the fanbase concluded that the players were simply not good enough. 20 months later, and the attack is still nothing to write home about, so is Tuchel really to blame?
First, it’s important to get context as to why the attack has performed so poorly. Tuchel came in January 2021 when Chelsea wasn’t scoring enough goals but was leaking even more. The Blues were slipping down the table and were ninth. Tuchel’s first decision was to change Chelsea’s 4-3-3 formation under Frank Lampard to 3-4-3. He made some personnel changes too. He moved from a Kurt Zouma-Thiago Silva centerback partnership to an Antonio Rudiger-Thiago Silva-Cesar Azpilicueta partnership. He also paired Jorginho with Mateo Kovacic to form the pivot in the center of midfield. This left Reece James and Ben Chilwell to be wingbacks.
The former Paris Saint Germain gaffer deployed Hakim Ziyech, Olivier Giroud, and Kai Havertz in his first game as the front three in a narrow way. This made Ziyech and Havertz more dual central attacking midfielders than wingbacks. Ziyech did make another appearance for weeks, a decision which many justified by saying Ziyech didn’t fit the system Tuchel was trying to play. This was a reasonable explanation.
This was the case for several other forwards. Chelsea now had players that had made a name for themselves in a certain positions and roles but were now expected to be as effective but in completely different roles requiring different traits. This was the consequence of Tuchel’s formation change. By adding a centerback to the backline and putting a double pivot in front of them, he created a solid defensive base on which Chelsea could build. At the same time, it removed a player that could help Chelsea going forward. This was the gamble that Tuchel was faced with: deploy a system that optimizes your midfielders and defenders or deploy a system that optimizes your forwards. He decided to choose the former.
‘TT’ made the right decision. It was the right decision because you’d logically win more games with very good defensive performances than with very good offensive performances. Why? Teams are more in control of their defensive outcomes compared to their attacking outcomes. You’re more likely to go from a 0-0 scoreline to a 1-0 or 2-0 win than you are to go from a 1-0 down scoreline to a 2-1 or 3-1 win. The baseline is you cannot lose if you don’t concede. This made optimizing the part of the squad that got you more clean sheets smarter than focusing on the element which produced more finishes.
Tuchel’s gamble was also predicated on the premise that he had a good enough attack to put away enough chances in games to win them if they didn’t concede. He was right. Chelsea’s forwards scored seven out of nine goals in the second half of the Champions League campaign en route to winning it in the 2020-21 season. Chelsea had the best defensive record in the competition that year, and the forwards did enough to win the games.
Unfortunately, while it was completely fair to sacrifice the attack for the system, the fact remained that the attack was sacrificed for the system and it made all of them worse for wear. Think about it, if a complete set of attackers are all grossly underperforming after a system has been changed to optimize the defense and midfield, what’s more likely? That the attackers are underperforming because they were never good OR that the attackers are underperforming because the system they’re in was not deployed to get the best out of them?
The fanbase grew to resent the forwards, which didn’t help because they kept trying to adapt and adjust their playing styles to the new system. The problem is: there are specific types of forwards for 3-4-3 systems. Chelsea simply did not have them. This is neither the fault of Tuchel nor the forwards. Many mentioned Tuchel wanting players who could play anywhere in the front three. The only player Chelsea had that could even remotely fit that description was Timo Werner. Tuchel wanted players he could play and who could interchange with each other in the front line during games and not skip a beat. He simply didn’t have them. Those are players you go out of your way to get.
Callum Hudson-Odoi, Ziyech, Havertz, Lukaku, Abraham, Giroud and Christian Pulisic could play in one position in the front three very well but would be out of his depth in one or two other positions. Usually, you would use three or four of them at a time to complement each other, but the system meant that Tuchel only had a maximum of three options at a time.
“Why didn’t he change the system then? It’s his fault for not changing the system” That is not so simple either. The reason he changed the system in the first place was that the players he had in defense and midfield, like the forwards, excel in very specific conditions. James struggled with many things when he played right back and still does now sometimes. Silva is brilliant but not quick, so that had to be accounted for. Rudiger usually got carried away leaving his centerback partners often on islands. The midfield has limitations too. Jorginho is not a good tackler. The change in the formation helped James, Azpilicueta, Rudiger, Kovacic, and Jorginho, but not just them.
It was not as simple as changing the formation to optimize the attack, because there was a lot about the squad that would suffer if the shape was changed. The case can be made that with the new signings, perhaps Tuchel had the personnel to transition to a back four, but by the time the new signings came, the board had already decided they had seen enough and pulled the plug on the project.
Tuchel’s inability to get a tune out of the forwards influenced his decision to often “do something different”, to see if it would bring something more out of the players he had, but that “something different” often put the forwards even more out of their comfort zones. Ziyech was a high-volume crosser and creator at Ajax. Under Tuchel he had to adjust his game by crossing less, to fit the system, but even that wasn’t enough, because everything that made him what he was at Ajax, was the opposite of what would make him successful in this system. Tuchel wanted him to be less risky, but also to create a boatload of high-quality chances. The only player in world football who could fulfil that requirement is Bayern Munich’s Thomas Muller.
Chelsea’s forwards were not world-class tier, but they also weren’t League Two tier. Tuchel did not go out of his way to make the attack profligate and toothless, but he didn’t help them much either. Admittedly, the forwards didn’t always do well when played in their preferred positions, but forwards don’t always do well when played in their strongest position anyway, talk less of when they’re played there for 25 mins every six games. The attack was an unfortunate consequence of a necessary system. The underperformance of the attack was as much on Tuchel as it was on the individual players.