Premier League 2018/19: Wolves vs Chelsea

Stop the press, Wolves have won! After conceding an unfortunate goal in the first half, it seemed that Wolves’ dismal run was set to continue and Chelsea were going to leave with three points. Two goals in four second-half minutes turned the game on its head and gave the Black Country side the best result of their Premier League campaign so far. In this Premier League tactical analysis, we are going to look at how all three goals were scored, two match-winning tackles and we’ll have a brief look at the rising star that is Morgan Gibbs-White and his performance against the likes of Cesc Fabregas and N’Golo Kante. A brief look for now, a more in-depth one will follow in the coming days.

Adaptation Rather Than Wholesale Changes

Nuno’s belief in his 3-4-3 system didn’t dwindle against Chelsea, although, he did tweak it ever so slightly. In essence, the formation became a 3-4-1-2 at times with Gibbs-White playing in the hole behind the two Wolves goalscorers, Jota and Jimenez. One of Gibbs-White’s tasks was to nullify Fabregas’ ability to play football in the same way that Dele Alli did just that for Spurs against Jorginho. Gibbs-White, an U17 World Cup winner with England, did much more than that and even though there were times when Fabregas was arguably given too much time, Gibbs-White was feaunrless from the word go.

Sarri perhaps made a change too many as he rotated his side. Jorginho, Kovacic, Luiz, Pedro and Giroud were all left out for Fabregas, Loftus-Cheek, Christensen, Willian and Morata. To put it simply, Chelsea are a different animal completely without Jorginho in the side. Did Sarri underestimate Wolves by not playing Jorginho in the league for the first time this season? Maybe. Did it prove decisive? 100%. Let’s have a look at how both teams lined up and rated, courtesy of SofaScore.

Little Mistakes, Big Consequences

Chelsea, as you would expect, started the stronger of the two sides. They did this without really creating many opportunities, though  a half-chance here, a long-range effort there. It seemed like Wolves were bang out of luck when Loftus-Cheek’s effort flew beyond Patricio via the head of Wolves skipper, Conor Coady. Let’s take a look at that goal and see if there was anything different Wolves could’ve done to prevent Loftus-Cheek from taking the shot on in the first place.

Similar to the Newcastle vs Chelsea game we looked at in the preview, Wolves have basically set up as a 5-4-1 when defending, with one key difference. Moutinho has gone to press the ball rather than waiting for the Chelsea pass into the forwards. The marker which is in the circled area illustrates where Moutinho should perhaps be rather than closing the ball down. It’s totally understandable why the ball is being closed down, however, it disjoints the midfield four.

Due to the ball bypassing Moutinho, it now, in turn, means that Ryan Bennett has to break the defensive line to fill the position that Moutinho vacated. As you can see, that leaves a rather sizeable gap in behind Bennett and room for Morata to work in. Either way, Loftus-Cheek has got his back to goal with two Wolves players in relatively close proximity, what’s the worst that could happen?

Occupy The Lines

Loftus-Cheek does well to play the ball out to Eden Hazard before finding a pocket of space in behind Matt Doherty. Naturally, Doherty has gone to close Hazard down as the last thing you want to do is give him any room within 30 yards of goal, however, shouldn’t Jimenez be doing that? Doherty leaves the defensive line looking skewed and Alonso is doing a great job of keeping Bennett busy. For a change, I’m not putting the blame wholly on Doherty, as the move was only able to begin by Moutinho pressing where it wasn’t really needed. Hazard plays the ball in between Jimenez and Doherty, Loftus-Cheek turns, takes a touch out of his feet and has a speculative attempt on the Wolves goal. Coa