Antonio Conte’s 3-5-1-1 formation, partly a result of dissatisfaction with the replacements for Matic, has played a big part in the club’s declineIf there was a moment when, symbolically at least, last season’s title race tipped decisively the way of Chelsea, it came 12 minutes after half-time of their game at Manchester City in December. City were leading 1-0 when Kevin De Bruyne, four yards out and with the goal gaping, slammed a Jesús Navas cross against the bar. Within three minutes Chelsea were level through Diego Costa and, as City lost their heads, Antonio Conte’s side went on to win 3-1.That game was 15 months ago, yet it may as well have been a lifetime. It is not so...
Chelsea stifled Barcelona’s key players, proving the Spanish side should not be so feared as they once wereThe first leg, you suspect, went just as Antonio Conte would have wanted it to go – apart from the bit about not playing a square ball across your penalty area to Andrés Iniesta with 15 minutes of a Champions League match remaining. But that is the problem with great tactical plans: they always rely, ultimately, on that most fallible of species: humans.Lionel Messi’s equaliser has tipped the tie Barcelona’s way, but Chelsea can draw great encouragement from the first leg and, having operated like the away side, can play the second in much the same way (another reason, incidentally, why the away...
Arsène Wenger’s pressing issues will not be solved by another creator but his front-foot tactics may galvanise a player who looked lost under José MourinhoOne game – or, more accurately, one half‑game – dominates the memory of Henrikh Mkhitaryan’s time at Manchester United. In the league derby at Old Trafford last season, the first meeting in England of José Mourinho and Pep Guardiola, the Armenian looked lost. He was partly responsible for the opening goal because of the way he initially did not press Pablo Zabaleta and then finally went far too late, and he was withdrawn at half-time. He did not play for two months after that.That seems to have contributed to a general sense that Mkhitaryan was somehow...
The pressing by Jürgen Klopp’s side was so disciplined that it forced a collective loss of control in the visitors’ backlineIt turns out, then, that the formula was simple. All anybody had to do to beat Manchester City was to match them shape for shape, press high up the pitch, harass them into a eight-minute meltdown, capitalise on mistakes with a series of stunning finishes and then cling on desperately.Jürgen Klopp is not the first manager to realise that the best way to unsettle a Pep Guardiola side is to squeeze them, and this is not the first time he has had his side do that effectively. No manager has a better record than Klopp against Guardiola: six wins in...
Anfield feels it has lost its key man but statistics do not back that up and suggest that, while Barcelona have signed a fine player, Jürgen Klopp has alternativesNo sooner had Philippe Coutinho’s frenetic scribble sealed a £142m transfer to Barcelona than he was forced to hurdle the first attempted tackle on him at Camp Nou. What, one interrogator asked at his unveiling, did he make of his fee? “It’s an honour but I’ll leave the topic of money for the clubs,” he deftly replied. Yet the question is bound to scratch and linger, and could potentially turn poisonous. Is such a sum – the second biggest transfer in history – for the 25-year-old Brazilian justified?Barcelona’s thinking is easy to...