Football News: Chelsea v Servette Review

Watched the Chelsea v Servette game on CFC YT, as I missed it due to work. Wasn’t expecting a perfect performance as it’s still a new team and tactics so won’t be too harsh overall. Also noting that this is the 2nd 11 so not necessarily expecting perfect football either.

First 5 mins we came out the blocks like a gun. Inside the first minute, KDH picks the ball up in our half, plays a good 1-2 with Mudryk and is dribbling into that centre left side of the pitch. Guiu is waiting on the last man to run in behind but KDH goes into traffic and loses the ball, but wins it back and then finally plays Guiu in with a decent ball. Admiral that Guiu tried to stay on his feet but if he goes down there I think it’s at least an 80% chance we get a penalty though. Definitely think KDH needed to play the through ball for Guiu the first time instead of trying to dribble more centrally and pass it across field to Nkunku.

After the first 5 mins, Servette sort of dominated play for a good 20 mins or so, with us barely creating anything and defensively truly looking like a back 5 who have never played together as a set. Will say that Veiga looked pretty decent defensively when needed although quite a few last minute tackles.

It looks like with Maresca’s system, there seems to be set places on the pitch for players with limited interchangeability. I say this as when in possession Veiga seemed to stay within a 5x5m area of the pitch and at one point ran to stand on top of KDH (I think) and pushed him and pointed at him to stand elsewhere. The passing was also very pedestrian, with very little movement off the ball.

Also think that whatever WB inverts, that side will see more action as generally throughout the first half KDH and Mudryk saw most of the ball out of our attacking players, most likely due to Veiga being left footed and it being more natural for him to look to play the ball out that way. When trying to switch play from left to right it was far far too slow. From Mudryk to Neto would take anywhere between 6-10 passes at which point the whole Servette defence had switched sides and was pretty pointless. Not expecting a pinged pass from the LW (Mudryk) to whoever is out right in future but it needs to be done far quicker if we’re going to get any joy out of it.

By the 40 mins mark Nkunku seemed fed up of seeing little of the ball and he’d drifted left to occupy the same space as KDH. Think throughout the first half both Nkunku and Neto only really saw the ball from…