How Man City put the final nail in the Premier League title race’s coffin against Chelsea – tactical analysis

The 22nd game week of the 2021-22 Premier League saw league leaders Manchester City host Chelsea in the repeat of last year’s Champions League final. Manchester City were coming into this game on the back of an 11-game winning run in the league as Pep’s men have started to take a seemingly unbreakable lead over their title rivals Liverpool and Chelsea. 

Chelsea, who were at the top at the start of December have suffered due to injuries and COVID along with some poor form to their key players. They lay 10 points adrift of their opponents and Tuchel was hoping to cut down the lead to 7 points. 

This tactical analysis discusses the tactics used by both the managers and how City managed to beat Chelsea and take the three points home. Let’s begin the analysis. 

Lineups

Pep Guardiola made four changes to the lineup that beat Arsenal last week. Phil Foden replaced Gabriel Jesus, Jack Grealish came in place of Riyad Mahrez, who has gone to the AFCON, Kyle Walker replaced Nathan Ake and John Stones replaced Ruben Dias.

Chelsea, meanwhile are still without their first-choice wing-backs, decided to go with their old formation of 3-4-3 where Kante, Thiago Silva, Alonso, Pulisic and Ziyech were drafted into the lineup instead of Jorginho, Christensen, Mason Mount, Timo Werner and Hudson-Odoi. 

Man City lack clinicality but control the game

In our analysis, we saw how Arsenal took Man City to a wild ride in the first half where the usually controlled and dominating defending champions found it really difficult to play their style. Though they lacked both penetration and control in that game, here they were able to at least get back the latter which was partially due to how Chelsea decided to set up.