At the beginning of the match day, Chelsea were top of the Barclay’s Premier League at 46 points, a positive omen for Chelsea as each time Mourinho’s sides have been top at this point, they have gone on to win their respective league.
Tottenham and Pochettino have enjoyed a good run of form over the last two months, suffering just two losses in that time, one to Stoke and the other a 3-0 loss to Chelsea at Stamford Bridge. Compared to their last match against Chelsea, Pochettino made four changes to the XI that he selected for this fixture, with Chadli, Townsend, Walker, and Rose coming into the team.
Mourinho made just one change to the team that won 3-0 against Tottenham about a month ago with Diego Costa in for Drogba.
Chelsea Allow Space
This was an odd ‘Mourinho’ match. While Chelsea have shown excellent balance this year and have shown their ability to control games in the style that Mourinho sees fit, there had been a blip earlier in the season when Chelsea beat Everton 6-3. This match, too, was incredibly open, something Mourinho doesn’t particularly enjoy.
Almost immediately, both sides were getting on the ball and moving it up the field with intent and it created a huge amount of space in midfield that could have been exploited by a well orchestrated counter attack. Below is a good example of the early stages, with Oscar breaking into a huge amount of space near the halfway line.
This move was also a good example of the opening quarter hour, as Oscar broke well, but had few options forward, eventually making a square pass to Costa, who had pulled wide left. This trend continued until Courtois’ quick throw found Hazard isolated against Rose. The number 10 beat the left back, beat Vertonghen in the penalty area, and had his shot hit the post in the build up to Costa’s opener.
After this, however, Tottenham began to gain control of the match as Chelsea sat in a mid-block. The interesting difference compared to other matches when they have had a lead and defended in a mid-block was that Chelsea allowed Tottenham to have the ball well within their half and applied no pressure on the ball carrier. At this point, as well, Pochettino had been forced to bring on Dembele, a player who is arguably at his best when he can dribble at static defenders. The screen capture below shows Bentaleb on the ball, but Chelsea sitting deep rather than applying pressure. At this point both teams were in a 4-2-3-1, so the central triangles meant there was usually going to be a deep player for each side, and Bentaleb’s position is fairly benign, but as Chelsea allowed Tottenham more space, Spurs began to exploit it well.
Tottenham Attack Wide
Four of Tottenham’s five goals started with moves on the left side of their attack. Their second goal, came when they won the ball back on the right side, but as Chadli’s shot came off the post to the left side of Chelsea’s area, Danny Rose was there to score.
Attacking the wide areas seemed to be the plan by Pochettino for Tottenham. They aimed to exploit the space left by Hazard’s high position and play into the space that was left when Oscar and Willian were rotating between central and wide roles. As mentioned above, Tottenham found most of their joy down the left side of their attack through Rose and Chadli and with Kane and Townsend drifting to the left to help create huge overloads, which shifted Matic, Fabregas, and Chelsea’s back four significantly. This allowed quick movements out of that space to open up Chelsea, which we saw in the first, fourth, and fifth goals for Spurs. Below is an excellent example of Tottenham’s overloads in the match. Notice all of Eriksen, Kane, Chadli, and Townsend on the left side of the pitch as well as the space that their overload opens up for Dembele to receive.
Kane and Chadli, in particular, put in excellent performances and were the obvious outlets for Tottenham’s attacks. Eriksen was instrumental in creating space and bypassing Matic and Fabregas, but Chadli and Kane were at the end of Tottenham’s best bits of play.
Chelsea’s Long Ball to Costa
Once Tottenham began to have control of the game and scored the late goals in the first half, Chelsea began to focus on long balls into the wide areas that Rose and Walker left open as they made their way up the field to support Tottenham’s attacks. In theory, this is not a bad decision, but with Chelsea’s wingers made to track the runs of Rose and Walker, it meant that Diego Costa was the one that was usually at the end of these long balls into the wide areas. This left the striker isolated in 1v1s, in situations where he couldn’t produce much and a few times he looked to play a cross into the Tottenham penalty area, despite no one being in the box.
As mentioned, it was smart to play Costa into the wide areas that were left vacant by Rose and Walker. Even when Chelsea were slow to offer him support, which was far too often, it at least allowed Chelsea to move up the field. When they attempted to play into Costa in central areas, Vertonghen and Fazio were comfortable in dealing with the striker, but when they got dragged out wide, they were a bit less capable. Centrally, Costa lost most 50/50 challenges and struggled to hold the ball up to allow for the likes of Oscar, Hazard, Fabregas, and Willian to play off of him.
Mourinho’s Changes
At half time, Mourinho took off Oscar and brought on Ramires and switched Chelsea from a 4-2-3-1 to a 4-3-3 with Matic now as the sole holding midfielder. This left Chelsea even more exposed at the back and allowed Kane and Chadli to become more isolated against Cahill and Ivanovic, both who had incredibly poor games.
The benefit was that Fabregas was now allowed to get further forward and help Diego Costa, Hazard, and Willian press and his advanced position helped lead to Chelsea’s second goal making the score 4-2 at the time. Mourinho’s second change saw Salah brought on for Willian. The Egyptian had a good chance to score after excellent play by Hazard, who was Chelsea’s best player on the day.
Conclusion
Tottenham’s best performance of the season made possible by Chelsea allowing them to take control of space and poor defending by the away side with Cahill and Ivanovic, in particular, putting in very poor performances.
This win moves Tottenham just two points outside of the top four and leaves Chelsea tied with Manchester City at the top of the league despite having a comfortable lead just a few weeks ago and a match between the two just three matches away.
Peter Motzenbecker
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Great analytical piece. Good job!