Chelsea 0-1 Manchester City (Mahrez 63′)
STAMFORD BRIDGE — Manchester City would surely have accepted simply maintaining their deficit to Arsenal before the mini-pause for two domestic cup assignments; narrowing the gap away at a Big Six peer is cause for some celebration.
Whether Chelsea can even claim that status is increasingly cause for further scrutiny. Graham Potter’s team have now won one of their last eight Premier League matches. They are bottom of the west London mini-league behind Fulham and Brentford.
At their most frustrating, Potter’s Chelsea have two specific traits. The first is the tendency to make the first pass after winning – or being given – the ball a backwards one. It is probably a tic to breathe confidence into fragile minds, considering their recent run. You play the ball back, keep safe possession and nobody shouts at you from the stands. Except that it makes life so much harder, particularly against a team in Manchester City who want to press high up the pitch.
Chelsea’s second trait surely relates to the first: their insistence on not shooting. Football supporters increasingly scream the word “shoot” whenever a central defender gets within 40 yards of goal, but Chelsea take it further. It reminds of late-Wenger era Arsenal, when the ball would be passed around the penalty area but never enter it. Because Chelsea have been too reserved in their own half, their opponents have the entry routes into the penalty area covered.
You know the trap by now. You look at a Manchester City teamsheet and think you have it nailed, only to find at least one player in an unexpected position. This midweek’s winner was Joao Cancelo, used as a marker post on the right touchline but high up the pitch. As soon as City won the ball, up Cancelo ran to stretch the game.
The plan was to drag Marc Cucurella out wide to meet Cancelo, at which point he would either take him on or play a ball to an underlapping runner. The thing is: at that point you have just got one full-back vs another. Was there any good reason not to pick, say, Julian Alvarez for the same role?
It bore some joy, not least because Cucurella is a very odd footballer to watch. He frequently does his job very well indeed, but everything appears to be done at Benny Hill-speed, all darts and dashes so that it’s impossible to tell whether what has happened – for better and worse – has occurred by chance or design.
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Mason Mount was laid low in training before the day of the game, while Raheem Sterling and Christian Pulisic made the same walk behind the Shed End goal in the opening 20 minutes. Carney Chukwuemeka was the lucky reserve, finally given an extended chance to impress. Those three absentees join N’Golo Kante, Armando Broja, Reece James, Wesley Fofana and Ben Chilwell in Cobham’s medical department. It’ll make for a good recoverers vs readies game in training.
Even before the injuries, City were the stronger candidates to fight their way out of the first-half fog. Having not enjoyed the first team and shape, Guardiola swapped both of his full-backs at half-time, pushing Bernardo Silva wide and telling Rico Lewis – who started at right-back – to play his new hybrid position where he becomes a central midfielder.
And then, having watched Bernardo have fun out wide, Guardiola changed both wide players and introduced Jack Grealish and Riyad Mahrez. When the move to five substitutions came, we wondered how much the big clubs would benefit – Guardiola effectively got three goes at landing upon the most effective strategy.
It was that second double substitution that effectively won the game, one winger providing for the other. Cucurella was done by the Three Card Monte street magic trick. He’d spent so long guarding against the run out wide that he failed to spot Mahrez on his inside. Kepa too seemed baffled, frozen to the spot as if asked to catch four balls at once while doing long division.
SUPER SUBS!
— Sky Sports Premier League (@SkySportsPL) January 5, 2023
Jack Grealish puts it on a plate for Riyad Mahrez and the Manchester City man makes no mistake with the simplest of finishespic.twitter.com/qS5FPYz5ZS
The good news is that new players will be along soon. Chelsea announced the signing of Benoit Badiashile just before kick-off and he will presumably be joined by at least one midfielder. Who knows, perhaps the new off-field team will scout in that untapped goldmine most of us know as Brighton and Hove Albion FC. It’s been at least a week.
As the rain began to fall with 15 minutes remaining, and Chelsea’s blue shirts were increasingly filled by youth players, academy graduates and signings that haven’t quite worked out, Stamford Bridge fell into a torpor that was broken only by the groans of chances squandered. The worrying part: this was one of their best recent performances.
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