Despite looking like surrpise title challengers last year, Chelsea’s season has started to unravel in dramatic fashion. Adam Clery looks at the reason for the drop in form, and why it’s only getting worse.
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00:00Right, hi everybody, Adam Cleary from 442 and, ahem, ahem, Chelsea. It would simply
00:11not be right for me to stand here in front of you all just a few short months ago rubbing
00:15my thighs and telling you why I was right all along and this Chelsea team were title
00:20challengers and then not come back all limp and spongy to tell you about why it's gone
00:26wrong so, yeah, that's, that's the whole intro.
00:33So, um, it's injuries. It's, it's, that's it. It's injuries. Please like and subscribe.
00:39I mean obviously not like the number of injuries this Chelsea squad is more densely packed
00:44than Boris Johnson's local wacky warehouse on his birthday but the type of injuries they're
00:49getting to specific players. To be more specific, I mean Romeo Lavia and Wesley Fofana. I cannot
00:56tell you how important to the overall way this entire Chelsea team plays they are.
01:02Like don't get me wrong and believe me we will talk about this later on in the video
01:06but you can now add Nicholas Jackson to a list that's got Madueke, Marc Gugliuli, Michaelo
01:12Mudrick and Joao Felix who's on loan. They're missing centre forwards in any capacity. That's
01:17bad but missing those two is fatal. If you put their respective seasons side by side
01:23when they were in the team and then when they were out of the team this bad run Chelsea
01:28have been on where they've gone from looking like Liverpool's best challengers to probably
01:33not even getting into Europe at all if they continue the way they're going. It almost
01:37overlaps perfectly. And why is that? Well look at Manchester City when they were at
01:42their best. Look at Arsenal when it felt like a real force. Look at Liverpool now. The best
01:47teams are no longer the prettiest. They always now have a really dominant, really physical
01:53edge to compliment their more technical players and give them the space to play. And for Farner
01:58and Lavia were, and I hope I'm not doing them a disservice here, Chelsea's two best bastards.
02:07You look at their tackles, you look at their interceptions, you look at their shots blocked,
02:10their headers, all the stuff that earns the rest of the team the right to play football
02:15and for Farner and Lavia were very quietly in those opening few months of the season
02:21dominating those matches for Chelsea. And don't get me wrong, this stuff doesn't automatically
02:26win you anything and the teams who can only do this side of it don't go very far either. But
02:31to be right at the top and win things, it is vital. Like this is for Farner and Lavia's combined
02:39defensive contributions against Aston Villa earlier in the season when Chelsea won 3-0.
02:45It's every time they won a tackle, it's every time they won a header, it's every time they
02:49intercepted a ball or made a clearance or just otherwise recovered possession for their side.
02:54And believe me, right, that is a lot for a team that had 64% of the ball. They were nearly doing
03:02all of that work for their team. And I'm just going to leave this up for a couple more seconds
03:06so you can really just absorb it, take it in, let it get into all your pores, right?
03:10Because the one really remarkable thing about all of this is how it compares to other players.
03:17These are the exact same instances from the exact same game from the two players they were both
03:24partnered with, Enzo Fernandes and Levi Colwell. Now, it is obviously a fraction of the dogged
03:29defensive physical work that their partners were doing, but there is a reason for that.
03:35This is Levi Colwell's heat map. And have you ever, my friend, seen a defender enjoying more freedom
03:42to just go where he wants up the centre of the pitch, to carry it out from the back,
03:47to help you get an extra man in the middle and dominate that other team?
03:51Look at all these lovely free passes forwards and sideways in the centre of the pitch,
03:56safe in the knowledge that they weren't going to get physically dominated because Fofana was in
04:00there. And if anything goes wrong, he's available to make interceptions, to make blocks, to make
04:04tackles, to do that work for you. And likewise, this was Enzo Fernandes' day's work. And what a
04:09lovely little time he's having. An absolute classic example of a deep player in a pivot
04:14being able to move into the forward line because your team are inverting a full back. It was Moises
04:19Caicedo this day, and Chelsea were absolutely at their best when the team ended up looking like
04:24this. Like, what a stable base they've got there, and what real good variety they've got in their
04:30centre backs, and the ability to get Fernandes all that way up the pitch. Beautiful. And as such,
04:35because you've got Fernandes here now, you can link up with Jackson, who's up front. You can
04:38link up with Palmer, who's enjoying all this space. You can link up with, I think this was
04:41Jadon Sancho played on the left that day. This is exactly where he wants to be, and he's doing so
04:47safe in the knowledge that things behind him are safe and they are stable. That this is happening
04:53with Levi Caldwell in this game, and that this is happening with Enzo Fernandes in this game,
04:58is not a coincidence, right? When you've got Fofana and you've got Lavia, these two can do this. But
05:05when you don't have those two players, as Chelsea just didn't against Brighton when they were
05:09absolutely terrible, Fernandes goes from having an afternoon like this, to having an afternoon
05:16like this. It's really far back. He's not getting in the right areas. It's disjointed. You can see
05:21he's trying to force things much longer from deeper positions, which is not really his game
05:26at all. There is a knock on effect to missing those players. And likewise, Levi Caldwell in
05:32the exact same position, unable to impact the game the way he wants to impact the game, looking
05:36way less assured, looking way less confident, and also giving the ball away a lot more.
05:41And I will just say, by the way, one constant between both this Goodran and this Badran has been
05:46Moises Caicedo. If we look at his numbers across the whole season, he's actually performing really
05:50well for all this stuff they miss for Fofana and they miss Lavia for. But the difference now that
05:56when Chelsea do their inversion and they get that stable base, that's now usually Gusto and Caicedo,
06:03which is far less sort of stable and secure as Lavia and Caicedo. Basically, they still have got
06:09a little bit of it in him, but he can't do it all. And also this is maybe a slightly basic point to
06:14make, like Lavia is just shy of six foot, which is a really important sort of thing to have in front
06:19of your defence. If a team tries to go long over your press, like Gusto and Caicedo just aren't
06:26going to compete for those. And if your two defensive midfielders aren't going to compete in
06:29the air, that puts more pressure on your centre backs to then get out and try and do that for
06:33them. So you can see small things in one place, but they end up being big things in another. So
06:38yeah, I guess the main point I'm trying to make is if you were wondering why Chelsea looked so much
06:42better this season than they did last season, it was because they added that physicality to their
06:47technical game and that was allowing them to dominate. And the way they'd done that was the
06:51Fafana and Lavia, who missed pretty much all of last season with injuries, they were now settled
06:56in the side. They gave them that thing they didn't have last year. And lo and behold, you take them
07:00both out with injuries this season and Chelsea kind of revert back to that sort of good in patches,
07:06but largely quite sort of weak and easy to push around team. That seems to make sense to me. And
07:12I will say as well, if you're just sort of struggling to get your head around why Fafana
07:16and Lavia's absences could make life so much harder for Caldwell and Fernandes, right? Imagine
07:22that the other way around, right? Where the two technical players in those partnerships,
07:28they were both gone. And now for Fafana and Lavia against their games, had to carry the ball more,
07:33had to pass the ball more, had to make things happen. Imagine how much they would struggle
07:37to do that. Works both ways. Now, technically that's me wrap this all up in record time and
07:43get myself home and paint all my Warhammer 40,000 miniatures. But that only explains why their form
07:49has dropped off in recent weeks, not why they've just gone to Brighton twice. And their only real
07:55shot on target was this from Parma, which goalkeepers union here is not a shot on target.
08:02So the question we really need to answer here is not why has it suddenly gone bad? It's why
08:07has it gone from bad to much, much worse? Because even if you have lost the physical
08:13core of your side, you're no longer able to dominate games the way you were. You should
08:17still be able to create something, but just God, I hope you're sitting down, have a look at the
08:23absolute state of this. And I mean, really take that in, let the absolute pungent stench of it
08:31get into your clothes. So I'll try and explain, right? So Chelsea without Farfana and without
08:37Lavia, obviously, but also without Jackson and without Madueke, because he's just come off,
08:41had set up like this. Basically, Fernandes had gone up to there alongside Parma, although he
08:47was inverting with Nkunku. So there was sort of a 10, sort of a false nine thing going on. Gusto
08:52would come into the middle with Caicedo, the back three were as follows. And the width was coming
08:58from Neto and Sancho. But first point of order, what f***ing width? Like Brighton have gone to a
09:05back five and you could shade every single one of those defenders with one umbrella. And yet
09:11Chelsea have zero interest whatsoever in all this space here and all this space here. And I know,
09:18I know what you're thinking because I thought the same thing, right? It's just the camera angle.
09:22One of them will be out here somewhere and they've just, they've just been cut off because
09:26that's Fernandes. There must be a wide player out to his left. And nah, nah, sorry. That is
09:33genuinely every single, you can count them, count them. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. This one,
09:39Sancho, this one's Neto. That is legitimately what they were trying to do. And what's worse
09:46somehow, right, is not the amorphous blob tactical shape they're in here, right?
09:50It's the body language of all of their attacking five, which is just look at it. Every single one
09:58of these lads is on his heels and walking slowly back towards the ball. Chelsea are in Brighton's
10:06final third. The defence is really deep. The lad on the ball has time and space and they're not
10:13doing anything. None of them are trying to pull a defender out into these areas here to create
10:17a bit of space. None of them are spinning in behind it where there's already a bit of room.
10:21None of them are even coming short with any real purpose. Like I know like none of you are like
10:27centre forwards in the classic sense. That wouldn't necessarily be your game, but just
10:32one of you has to do something. Like I am genuinely asking, what do you think the plan
10:38was supposed to be in that situation? Because what happens is eventually it goes out to Kukere
10:42who puts it in the box and they get a sort of halfway decent chance out of it, but there is
10:46no way on earth in training they were like, right, look, lads, what we'll do is in that
10:51situation, we'll get the ball out of the fullback who will make a wrong footed cross and Kunku,
10:57Palmer and Gusto, one of you get a big head on it. Like quite aside from the fact it would be
11:02really funny if that's how Enzo Maresca talk. There's just nothing to pull or stretch or strain
11:07or disrupt this defence. They're just allowed to sit in this block and lo and behold, Chelsea could
11:12not get through it for 90 minutes. It was like this for the entire game. This is another example
11:17later on where Gusto just ends up having a shot from distance. And again, look at the body language
11:22all on the heels, all walking towards the ball, all doing what they think they should individually
11:28be doing in that situation without anybody being like, oh, hang on. Someone's got to run in behind.
11:33Someone's got to stretch this defence and just nothing. Now, this is the bit that you might find
11:39slightly disagreeable, OK? Because I know four Chelsea fans and first off, yes, that's right.
11:45I do have at least four friends and they are all split exactly down the middle on this point,
11:51which bad at maths is two each. When you see situations like this and you see the lack of
11:56movement and you see the lack of penetration, lol, you realise how important Nicholas Jackson is
12:03to Chelsea as an attacking unit. Now, obviously goes without saying that they've been on a long
12:08bad run and Nicholas Jackson was present for all of that long bad run. But if the question we're
12:13asking now is how has it gone from bad to just zero offensive threat? He's actually the consistent
12:20there. He missed both of those games. And yes, his finishing has always been pretty suspect for
12:25every really good chance he does take. There'll be two or three more that you cannot believe he's
12:29missed. And you look at here as chance conversion numbers are more or less identical to last season.
12:34He's not even improving in the ways we thought he would. But crucially, he makes those movements.
12:42He isn't static. He is always looking to cover ground. He is always looking to get in behind.
12:46He is a nightmare for defenders to try and keep an eye on. And more importantly, he makes the space
12:54that all five of those players are just waiting to magically come. So many of his goals, so many of
13:00Chelsea's goals this season have involved some sort of run in behind from Jackson. Like here
13:06against Liverpool, every single time they got the ball in the middle, he was stretching that defence.
13:12But this time, and take note of this, because this is him and Madueke who was missing, by the way,
13:16they both make that run in behind. They both try and stretch Liverpool. And it isn't a goal. Nothing
13:21major comes of it. But it ends up with Cole Palmer getting the ball in this part of the pitch with
13:27this much room. Now you tell me, go back to that shot in the Brighton game and in what universe is
13:33Cole Palmer ever finding that much space when everyone else is just slowly walking back towards
13:40the ball and nobody's trying to stretch the defence. He's not. My point is that he's not.
13:46And don't get me wrong, by the way, Palmer is out of form as well. His performances have really
13:50dropped off the last couple of games, just like Nicholas Jackson's performances have dropped off
13:55the last couple of games. But you start to rewind that back. You can see that the team as a whole
14:00is not functioning as well. Caldwell is struggling. Fernandes is struggling. And why are they
14:05struggling? Because they're missing Lavia and they're missing Fafanas. You look at all the
14:09problems they've got. You can just about trace them all back to those two injuries, I think.
14:16Those two and what they bring to the team is a really important core ingredient in the way any
14:21team has to assert itself in a game of football. And you take that out and you start to get knock
14:27on effects all throughout the entire rest of the team and across the pitch. And I mean, look, if you
14:32want me to really oversimplify this as much as I can, but it's not like the first graph I used in
14:36this video, like chart the bad runs and compare them to when Fafana and Lavia were playing. Like
14:43it almost lines up absolutely perfectly. And sometimes it is just that simple. But to take
14:50this to a slightly bigger question people are having as a result is, does this mean Nzumarez
14:54is actually getting found out as a manager? Was the big drop off he had at Leicester last year
14:59just kind of who he is and this is all really on him? And time will tell. Like it sucks these
15:07injuries, but a good manager would find ways to adapt and find ways to stop the season getting
15:12away from you as a result. So we will see in a couple of weeks if that's the case. And the same
15:19goes, by the way, for this question of, is it bad squad building? Do the board need burned at
15:23the stake? And we will see, they would certainly argue the money that's been spent and the amount
15:28of players available should be able to cover two little injuries to the squad. So if Maresca can do
15:34that with the players he's got, then I guess they're right. But if he can't and this season
15:39completely slips away for Chelsea, then it's one of their faults, possibly both. But anyway,
15:44speaking of which, the next two home games are Leicester and Southampton. Yay! And the next two
15:50away games are Villa and Arsenal. Oh no! So we'll see. Anyway, though, if you have enjoyed this,
15:56and I do feel like I went slightly mad because I filmed it at 8pm because I can't get into the
16:00studio for the rest of the week. Sorry about that. Do let me know in the comments below. Chelsea fan,
16:05not Chelsea fan, enjoying it, not liking it. Who's to blame in your eyes? Is it me somehow,
16:10just for talking about it and making it worse? All thoughts and feelings. I told you I've lost
16:13my mind. Absolutely welcome in the comments below. You can get me across all the social
16:17medias at Adam Cleary. C-L-E-R-Y. Pew, pew, pew, pew, pew. And the 442 socials are in the corner
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