Brighton-Chelsea: Tactical Analysis (a thread)
- Brighton utilising the spaces out wide left by Chelsea's lack of cover for the back three
- Brighton's excellent pressing and early chaos forcing a flurry of corners to put Chelsea under pressure
- Brighton utilising the spaces out wide left by Chelsea's lack of cover for the back three
- Brighton's excellent pressing and early chaos forcing a flurry of corners to put Chelsea under pressure
What stuck out to me so early was Brighton's intense, man to man pressing with Trossard closing down Thiago Silva, March on Cucurella and Mitoma on Chalobah, Silva misplaced an early pass which led to Trossard lobbing Kepa with Thiago Silva needing to clear off the line
De Zerbi said they wanted to go man-to-man and basically quoted what I mentioned. What this pressure from Brighton did, is lead to a flurry of corners 5 in the first 13 minutes. Away with the crowd up facing corner after corner with a team pressing up the pitch creates pressure
Obviously it led to the 2nd goal where March's delivery was particularly dangerous, but it also led to the early Estupinan effort that Thiago Silva had to clear off the line.Chelsea were under the cosh so early they were shocked by Brighton's intensity
This is after an early corner and instead of Brighton's players getting back into shape in their own half they continued to press Chelsea so they couldn't get the ball up the pitch but also so the defence was under constant pressure giving them no respite
Thiago Silva gave the ball away cheaply again which was cut out by Trossard but you can already see the lack of cover the 3-4-3 gave to Chelsea it let Mitoma run directly at Chalobah so he could pass to Trossard to score neatly
Brighton's aggressive press has to be noted because it never let Chelsea settle into any rhythm or smooth route to goal occasionally making the odd foul when needed when Chelsea were on the ball
It felt as though Mac Allister had an interesting position of covering the advanced roaming 8 basically cutting off the passing lane to wherever Gallagher-Mount was so they couldn't find the correct link centrally.
As you can see Brighton's pressing structure here with the wingers jumping on the wide CB's, Lallana on Loftus Cheek and Brighton's midfield pivot on Gallagher-Kovacic, this is one of the few times the system actually worked to get Mount free with the wingers wide
I think the point of Chelsea's formation was for Sterling-Perisic to stay wide and drag the full-back out creating spaces between the full-back and centre-back for Mount or Gallagher to utilise but they didn't do this enough
The biggest threat from Brighton was their use of the wide spaces vacated by Chelsea having no cover at wing-back and Sterling-Perisic not tracking back, it dragged the back 3all over the place. A quick exchange leads to Mitoma releasing Estupinan with little cover in the box
Chelsea did press but at times it felt like the start of the Man Utd game with players not sticking man to man or being dragged to the ball instead of sticking to position or picking up players interchangeably. In what @Jon_Mackenzie calls a 'hybrid press'
I think this is clearly just Potter trying to instil pressing into a team or a form of pressing that they aren't used to at all and are still learning how to correctly execute, whilst the system and players change often. Brighton were comfortable playing through the press
Once this happened and Chelsea's players were up the pitch Solly March would be released who had a run on Cucurella the whole game as he was trying to be agressive and push him up the pitch. It led to once again wide spaces in Chelsea's back line
Chelsea's pressing structure was an advantage for Brighton as they'd go long to the striker, dragging out Chelsea's centre-backs leaving lots of space in behind. It surprised me how little defensive cover there was on the wings and that it was a back 3 out of possession
With one Chelsea midfielder joining in the press it also meant there was little midfield cover. Chelsea are learning how to press in the way Potter wants but when that wasn't working there was little help for the back 3 that were also trying to push up high
It's also exactly how the 3rd goal came about with Chalobah forced to go wide to Mitoma and Estupinan's run not tracked by Perisic which led to the own goal
The spaces utilised by Brighton and Chelsea's bold approach to stick to a back 3, hoping turnovers would lead to chances in the press led to Brighton being dangerous. I understand why Potter went for this as Chelsea could've exploited space with De Zerbi building up from the back
Maybe we'll see a better version of this out of possession as time goes by for this new Chelsea team but I'm also surprised he didn't change things as we saw the Kova change vs Utd. Chelsea did have chances when Brighton's build-up was weak but it was too little too late
End of thread!
Thanks as always for reading, let me know your thoughts on the game and as usual will be covering this on my substack in more detail (title is work in progress lol):
dharnish.substack.com
Thanks as always for reading, let me know your thoughts on the game and as usual will be covering this on my substack in more detail (title is work in progress lol):
dharnish.substack.com
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