The greatest statistical feat in Premier League history was not Manchester City reaching 100 points, Liverpool winning the title with seven games to spare or even Arsenal going the entire season unbeaten. Chelsea’s 2004-05 team, during Jose Mourinho’s first season of his first tenure, conceded just 15 goals.
In the 16 completed seasons since, no team has got within seven. It has become increasingly easy to score lots of goals in the Premier League (four teams scoring 100+ since 2009), but harder to concede precious few.
You could argue that Chelsea had the perfect conditions to set that record: they had a manager who prioritised defensive security (that’s an observation, not a dig), Mourinho had signed two expensive, international defenders from his old club (Ricardo Carvalho and Paulo Ferreira), had a new goalkeeper in Petr Cech and that was a low-scoring season in general (only two teams scored more than 60 Premier League goals). Which makes it all the more ridiculous that Chelsea are currently on course to concede 13 league goals in 2021-22.
Thomas Tuchel has instigated a defensive revolution at Stamford Bridge. A team that kept only three clean sheets in their final 12 matches under Frank Lampard have kept 31 in Tuchel’s first 50 games. In total, Chelsea have conceded only 24 goals under the German. In the history of English top-flight managers, almost 850 in total, nobody has conceded fewer in their first 50 matches.
But it is a revolution based on simple principles. Tuchel inherited a team that lacked the right balance between defence and attack; Lampard was guilty of pushing extra players forward to try and break down a deep-lying defence and getting caught out on the counter. Tuchel decided that he must make Chelsea resilient, whatever the knock-on effect on the attack. When that was watertight, he could begin developing the attacking systems.
Tuchel has made Chelsea more defensive, although several players have been a little prickly in response to that suggestion. His first two months in charge were dull; 10 matches that contained only 13 goals in total. He is still the Chelsea manager with the lowest goals-scored-per-game record since Gianluca Vialli. But “defensive” need never be an insult when it accompanies improvement in results and signs of greater balance between attack and defence begin to appear. Chelsea have scored 28 goals in their last 10 matches and still only conceded three times. This is exactly how Tuchel planned it.
Premier League clean sheets since Tuchel joined Chelsea
- Chelsea: 19
- Man City: 17
- Liverpool: 13
- Brighton: 12
- Everton: 11
- Tottenham, Arsenal: 10
It helps to have magnificent options that fit together snugly. Thiago Silva is the vintage Rolls Royce central defender who often drops back deeper to become a sweeper when Chelsea have possession. Antonio Rudiger wins the headers and makes the tackles but is also confident stepping up with the ball. Trevoh Chalobah is the young buck with searing recovery pace and a confidence in possession that improves every week. Cesar Azpilicueta and Andreas Christensen are high-level backups and the central defenders are flanked by wing-backs to which Tuchel has given total licence to surge forward.
In front of the defenders sit at least two of Jorginho, Mateo Kovacic and N’Golo Kante. All three could be easily – but unfairly – sold as defensive midfielders. It’s an accusation that Gareth Southgate faces with England, that three central defenders and two holding midfielders makes you guilty of a lack of courage, but it all comes down to mentality. When Kante is running 40 yards and scoring against Leicester, and your wing-backs are amongst the most effective attacking players in the league, that insult disintegrates. Shape and formation are far less important than intent.
And behind that defence is arguably the best goalkeeper in the world on current form. Chelsea’s defence has been effective at smothering attacks and avoiding shots (they have only faced 18 in their last four league games combined), but they are still allowing an expected goals total of almost one per game. That’s where Edouard Mendy comes in; his save percentage of 93.8 per cent is more than 13 percentage points above any other Premier League goalkeeper. Mendy is saving Chelsea a quarter of a goal per game on average based on the quality of the shots he faces.
That all sounds simple, but it does sell Tuchel a little short. It suggests that he has simply arranged some high-level component parts and watched on as they made him look like a master craftsman. But in other situations with other managers, Chalobah might easily have looked out of his depth and lost confidence, Thiago Silva’s lack of pace might have been exploited and Chelsea could have been exposed to the counter by a lack of balance in central midfield. And for all the doubts about Chelsea losing their academy connection post-Lampard, Tuchel has built the right side of his defence around two graduates.
The answer, according to Chalobah, is attitude. “It starts in training,” he said before the Juventus game. “It’s very competitive, even when we do small-sided training games. Nobody wants to lose, and nobody wants to concede a goal. The mentality we have within ourselves and what the manager demands from us is shown in the games. We aren’t conceding and if you don’t concede, you win games.” Confidence breeds confidence, clean sheets breed clean sheets, success breeds success.
Chelsea probably won’t beat their own record. There are too many games to play, too many other elite teams to face, too many competitions to fight deep into for that. Mendy will leave for the Africa Cup of Nations and could miss eight games. They will suffer a temporary lapse at some point, as during the 5-2 home defeat to West Brom in April.
But that’s not the point. In the space of 10 months, Tuchel has won the Champions League, kept Chelsea in the top four, created the best defence in the country and made Chelsea more prolific despite losing two strikers to injury. He arrived in England with his critics worried about him falling out with those in charge; now Chelsea’s hierarchy are falling over themselves to praise him.
from Football – inews.co.uk https://ift.tt/3xh7pjP
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