In their FA Cup fourth round battle, Chelsea came out on top against Sheffield Wednesday with a 3-0 victory. Obviously, the result was expected, but the first half did not seem an easy one due to the guests’ defensive manner which made Chelsea’s job difficult. Therefore, this tactical analysis will reveal the difficulties that Chelsea had to face.
Team news
Sheffield Wednesday continue to struggle in the Championship, although they were able to win their last match against Wigan. They had also managed to remain in the FA Cup, although the previous round was not a hard one.
On the other side, Sarri’s men had begun to get back on the right track with a win in the EFL Cup against Tottenham after the defeat against Arsenal. Several changes occurred in their line-up for this game, with Sarri throwing in new signing Gonzalo Higuain so that Eden Hazard could rest a bit.
Willian remained on the left wing while Hudson-Odoi replaced Pedro on the right. Ethan Ampadu, Andreas Christensen and Willy Caballero were handed rare starts. Ross Barkley also got an opportunity to play. Kovacic moved to the right side, occupying Kante’s position, while Barkley took the left half-space.
Sheffield defensive setup
As underdogs, Wednesday took a defensive approach against Chelsea with a 4-1-4-1 or 4-5-1 formation. Consequently, their main and only tool for scoring was the counter-attack, although this proved extremely difficult. Since Fletcher did not stay high due to his defensive duties man-marking Ampadu, his positioning was based on the Welsh internationals movement. The almost complete lack of attacking threat appeared in the statistics with an xG of just 0.03.
With the 4-5-1 formation, the away team created a massive and compact shape designed to not allow Chelsea to utilise the central area. Thus Chelsea were restricted to the lateral zones. Sarri’s men aimed to create combinations down the wings especially on the right in between the ball-sided winger and full-back and the nearby number eight.
On the left, Chelsea exercised long balls towards Willian whose goal was to cut inside whilst Hudson-Odoi sought crossing opportunities from the right wing. Another pattern in Chelseas positional play was the positional rotation in between the winger, full-back and the nearby central midfielder. As the image below shows, when Kovacic or Barkley dropped deep the wingers would move into a narrower position, which give space for the full-backs to move forward and occupy higher areas.
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