Chelsea vs Aston Villa: Tactical Analysis

An old tale of Chelsea domination and missing their chances

Chelsea returned to an unbeaten Stamford Bridge after the mauling of Middlesbrough on a high to play one of the Premier League’s better teams this season in Aston Villa. Let’s analyse what happened…

Chelsea lined up in a 4-2-3-1 as usual but without a recognised ST. Palmer played false 9 with Gallagher behind him. Colwill was pencilled in for a start until he got injured in the warm-up and was replaced by Gilchrist. Villa used their 4-4-2 formation of a diamond midfield as well.

At the start, Villa's intention wasn’t to press Chelsea high as Chelsea could play right through them. They instead played a compact 4-4-2 midblock to deny easy passage through them, but they still kept their high line and tried to press more when Chelsea brought the ball into midfield. Chelsea still managed to play through them.

Chelsea built up as usual in their 4-2 shape, if it initially started as a 4-1, Gallagher or Enzo dropped deep to be another option alongside Caicedo.

Chelsea formed a 2-3-5 shape in possession. Although it looked like 4-1-5, it wasn’t as Badiashile and Gilchrist were quite narrow making it look also like a 2-3-5 too as Gilchrist and Badiashile shuffled in and out of the midfield depending on the game state. It was very compact as well and prevented counters as it pinned Villa most of the time.

Chelsea's plan straight away was to permeate Villa's high line like how we did against them earlier in the season, and we still got into dangerous positions by doing that.

The midfielders and CBs were encouraged to play long balls in behind the Villa defence. The attackers were instructed to make runs continuously, Noni, Gallagher and Sterling made runs in behind the Villa defence and it led to chances. Better decision-making would have helped to capitalise on it.

Apart from the Early long balls, we also had the constant in-seam runs from Gallagher and Palmer. Even Enzo constantly broke the Villa backline and caused problems, but needed that split-second decision to play the resulting square ball earlier to get more chances or more aggressiveness to finish them off. The pass was on all game, as those players were constantly making the runs. Noni and Sterling did well to find them .

The In-seam runs are slowly creeping into our attacking play when we displayed lots of it against Middlesbrough as well.

What was impressive was the way we frequently cut Villa open constantly by playing through them. Another thing that was impressive as well was the way we also pressed Villa into surrendering chances.

Chelsea pressed in a 4-2-2/4-1-4-1 depending on the situation. Palmer and Gallagher led the press brilliantly. When Palmer pressed Martinez to play on one side, Gallagher followed up on the corresponding CB on that side, and the midfield pushed up high with Caicedo marking as far as Villa's final third.

Let’s see an example of that….

let’s see the rest of the pressing actions as well….

Chelsea also for me had their best half-sustaining pressure this season. The counter-pressing was top, which continued from the Middlesbrough game. You can see the time on the training ground and the rest did us good, Villa could only get out of that very few times relative to their quality. We won the ball back almost every time.

When Chelsea didn’t press high, they stayed in their compact 442 midblock of their own and denied Villa space to play.

Some of the times Villa got out, some individual press resistance was important for them from McGinn and Douglas Luis.

Early on when Villa had the ball, they tried to go through the flanks with their Wingbacks, but it was easily handled in the first half.

Villa also posed a threat from set pieces as they tried some interesting neatly worked set pieces that I still wonder why many clubs don’t try to innovate more. They got a goal rightly disallowed from it too.

Chelsea were also dangerous on the transition. It feels so long since saying this because the teams we’ve faced over the last month haven’t given Chelsea so much over transitions as they sit in blocks. We will see more when we face Liverpool, Spurs and co over the next month again. Our player quality breaking the press was on show with beautiful pieces of play. Our decision-making and finish were lacking.

Chelsea moved the ball very well throughout most of the game, controlling the flow of the game. Caicedo and Enzo were key to that as well as what we did off the ball, that I have already described. Apart from moving the ball into the final third by balls in behind, we also used the pockets well and Gallagher on the half turn was good at it.

The Chelsea domination continued utill the last 22 odd minutes when Villa started finding more space out wide as Chelsea began to tire with switches of play.

They also started to find more space in between the lines as Chelsea‘s high defensive line began to drop deeper you - could say the subs kind of disrupted that a bit - we never quite finished the same way. Compare the first video to the last 2 clips.

Chelsea ended up scrapping a draw against Villa, despite being the better team for most of it.

We need to learn how to turn our dominance into goals and create better chances from promising positions as well as score the ones we create.

But the direction the team is going is much much better and in tune with the way we started the season performance-wise in the last 2 games after the break and this year generally.

The hope is someone like Nkunku can help massively, and Jackson too when he comes back, being our 2nd highest goal scorer.

Now we have to win the harder way, onto the replay at Villa Park!

Seun