FAWSL 2019/20: Chelsea Women vs West Ham Women – tactical analysis

Matchday fourteen of the current FAWSL campaign brought us a potential upset in the making with West Ham Women visiting Chelsea Women at Kingsmeadow. Chelsea are without debatably their best attackers in Sam Kerr and Ji So-yun, who are both participating in Olympic qualifying matches. Would West Ham be able to step up and steal some points from the currently dominant Chelsea squad?

After analysis, we see that West Ham chose to deploy in a rarely seen formation to create opportunistic overloads. Chelsea used attacking tactics that suited the formational foundation that West Ham had set for the encounter.

Could West Ham topple the charging Chelsea? This tactical analysis will tell us exactly how it happened.

Lineups

Chelsea (4-4-2): Telford; Blundell, Bright, Eriksson (c), Andersson; Mjelde, Ingle, Spence, Reiten; England, Cuthbert

West Ham United (3-5-2): Earps; Fisk, Flaherty, Vetterlein; Kvamme, Dali, Longhurs, Simic, Baunach; Kiernan, Lehmann

Chelsea: counter-press

In a match that had an almost completely even split of possession (Chelsea: 51% and West Ham: 49%), Chelsea sought to make every possession as unpleasant as possible for the visiting Lady Hammers. This was done with the use of intense counter-pressing directly upon losing the ball.

There are many ways to counter-press as a unit. In this instance, Chelsea sought to use a passing-lane oriented counter-press to regain possession of the ball in dangerous spaces. In this form of counter-pressing, all nearby Chelsea players position themselves to create cover shadows and cut out any nearby West Ham passing options. This tactic is difficult to execute for multiple reasons.