‘System’, ‘philosophy’, and ‘tactics’ are just some of the words that have been running around the media and the Chelsea fanbase ever since the appointment of Enzo Maresca.
Through club briefs and through simply looking at his Leicester side of last season, we have been promised possession-based football with a clear style of play.
After four games of pre-season, we can confidently say we are on track to see this.
I don’t think there’s much point in detailing what we’ve seen tactically so far because most of it is as we expected – an aggressive man-to-man press, inverted fullbacks, and isolating wingers into 1v1 positions.
Pre-season is probably the only time in the season where you can confidently say results really don’t matter. Often, the underlying numbers and general sense of performance are better indicators of how well a team will start the season.
Even then, a team that performs great in pre-season can perform badly at the beginning of the competitive season. Look at Pochettino’s Chelsea, unbeaten in pre-season only to sit in 14th with one win against promoted and subsequently relegated Luton Town after the first 6 games.
We also witnessed a fairly ‘modern’ tactical approach in pre-season from Pochettino with him utilising a 3-2-5 on the ball and a 4-2-3-1 off the ball.
A couple of injuries immediately resulted in the awful mis-profiling of key players such as Enzo Fernandez into the number ten role.
Results remained sub-par, and everything that was worked on in pre-season was scrapped by October. The point is that what we see in pre-season is ultimately not always indicative of what we will see when the season starts.
On a positive note, Maresca is unlikely to ditch everything we’ve worked on so far in pre-season, especially after reviews from Leicester fans who dubbed him as stubborn to his footballing philosophy.
This is probably a good thing, seeing his philosophy and style of play this early suits the Chelsea squad well and should provide good results this season.
Despite travelling and only having two weeks of training at Cobham without our key players, we can already see most if not all of Maresca’s key principles at play.
Sure they’re unrefined, like our out-of-possession structure after our man-to-man press is beaten, but they are there to see, if you want to see them and aren’t blinded by agenda.
Maresca’s system plays to a lot of our players’ strengths. It also compensates for a lot of their weaknesses. We can invert Reece James, utilising his intelligence and technical ability in deep buildup as well as preserving his fitness.
We can invert Malo Gusto, also utilsing his technical ability and intelligence. Maresca’s emphasis on deep buildup also suits Romeo Lavia and Moises Caicedo, both of whom are excellent at winning the ball back and adeptly being able to progress the ball up the pitch through various passing angles.
We can isolate Noni Madueke 1v1 against a fullback, playing to his ability to take a man on. All of this is great, but so far how has this translated to the pitch?
We’ve scored eight goals and conceded ten goals in just four games. So yes, our defence currently appears to be an issue.
However, when you watch the goals there is still cause for concern but it is not as pressing of an issue as it may seem from the surface.
We limited Wrexham to nearly nothing in the first half, and we only looked vulnerable in the second half after eleven substitutions of players who clearly looked way less refined than the initial eleven tactically.
We have conceded eight big chances in these four games, five of which came against Celtic who exploited our immature press and off-the-ball structure.
Our pre-season game against Celtic was our second pre-season game. It was Celtic’s last, with their season beginning only a week after playing us.
We limited Club America to not a single big chance and kept a clean sheet against them. Three of the four goals conceded to Manchester City also stemmed from direct errors.
The other goal stemmed from an error, as well as Haaland mysteriously falling over and getting a penalty.
Other than these errors, Manchester City failed to really create anything of their own accord.
A few people have questioned the number of shots we have conceded.
We have so far conceded:
- 3 to Wrexham
- 14 to Celtic
- 10 to Club America
- 10 to Manchester City
In the last four games of the Premier League season, we conceded:
- 13 to West Ham
- 20 to Nottingham Forest
- 12 to Brighton
- 22 to AFC Bournemouth
Yes, it is pre-season but these are also somewhat promising trends. Watching the games themselves also shows that most shots seem to stem from individual errors and passing mistakes directly giving the opponent the ball.
Seeing Chelsea fans care so much about pre-season data, here is some data for you.
Chelsea have created more big chances in three of their four games so far.
How about compared to the last four in the league last season?
Yes, this is pre-season being compared to the actual season which I said explicitly at the beginning of this article not to do but if people are really worried about the results so far then this should ease their minds somewhat.
Above is the match momentum for the Chelsea game against Wrexham.
Chelsea against Celtic match momentum.
Chelsea against Club America match momentum.
Finally, Chelsea against Manchester City’s match momentum.
The point of all of this is that we’ve dominated the majority of each game, having good periods of sustained pressure against all four teams we’ve played so far.
This is particularly promising in the sense that we struggled to sustain pressure throughout the majority of last season, as evident in multiple momentum charts.
Above is the match momentum against Championship side Leeds United in the FA Cup at home.
Ultimately, there are issues indeed that need ironing out. There is a ridiculous amount of recurring individual errors as well as concerns over our press leaving us exposed with a high line.
That being said, Maresca has directly addressed these concerns and has also acknowledged them to be suicide. I would be concerned if the manager glossed over these issues instead of addressing them.
These are issues, no doubt but they are also issues that can be fixed in a short time.
The performances haven’t been pretty but they have shown a defined style of play and progress in each game.
The system on paper should improve our players and play to their strengths and the underlying data, as simple as shots against, big chances for and against, and even match momentum suggests we are making progress and the results against us are relatively unfair.
The first five or so games of the season mean a lot more than anything discussed in this article but for what it’s worth, there is no reason to worry or panic yet, and fans should get behind the team and manager.
