English Premier League 2018/19: Chelsea vs Arsenal

Coming in the Premier League with new ideas and tactics is not something easy. Maurizio Sarri and Unai Emery have two similar approaches, a mix of pressing and possession game but implement these schemes in England is not as easy as in Italy or Spain.

The last game facing Chelsea against Arsenal (3-2) demonstrate how the two managers have still work to do to make the best of their team.

In this piece, we’ll look closely at how both Chelsea and Arsenal are not equally balanced tactically and how it influenced their performances.

Unai Emery bringing new features in Arsenal tactics

This second Emery game allowed us to see new features brought by the former PSG manager.

With injuries of Kolasinac (and Maitland-Niles), he aligned Nacho Monreal as left back and Bellerin as right back. In Emery tactics right and left back are essentials pieces of the team, especially for the pressing. Unlike other lineups in 4-2-3-1, it is not the duo in the midfield to cover their winged defenders. Indeed, Emery asks the wingers to swap with the defenders when necessary and thus cover the blanks.

On the first Chelsea goal, we can see that Bellerin follow Willian in the midfield. While it’s usually a player positioned like Xhaka in the picture above to cover his teammate, here it’s Mkhitaryan to cover Alonso breakthrough. However the Armenian is too late and too slow to coming back. Moreover, the defense is also slow and too sluggish, ending with an easy goal for Chelsea

This tactic in place is more for attack purposes: the passnetwork below shows how the relationship between wing backs and wingers is important in Emery tactic.

This relative small distance between them is perfect in attack to create space on the wings, wingers like Iwobi or Mkhitaryan here can easily come in the midfield and create overloads in midfield opponent.