Tuchel’s Tactical Masterclass vs Leicester

TACTICAL ANALYSIS PIECE

After an international break that seemed like a lifetime, club football was back and most importantly for us Tuchel and his Chelsea team were back and back with a bang. Chelsea destroyed Leicester as we ran out 3-0 winners against a pretty poor Leicester team. As poor as they were, Chelsea was playing with such swagger, verve, and confidence. Tuchel got his tactics spot on and outclassed Rodgers whose team chased shadows for 90 minutes. Here we will dissect what Tuchel did to give Chelsea a massive advantage in this game.

First, we start from the line ups, Chelsea went with their usual 3421 formation which hasn’t changed since day 1, although Tuchel used some tactical switch-ups in this game like he always does to suit the opponent, while Leicester decided to match us up with their own 3421, a move which has led to a degree of success at times for the opposition that uses it against Chelsea.

Leicester however don’t know how to play in this formation like Chelsea does under Tuchel and it showed heavily, if this fixture happened just before or in between the Mancity and Juventus games, the result might have been the same but the manner the WB’s overloaded the midfield would have been different from then and now. The tactical switch up from those 2 losses which involve the WB’s underlapping and rotating with the inside forwards, is looking hard to deal with.

The Wingbacks took turns rotating with the inside forwards inverting confusing Leicester’s backline on who to pick up who. Each time they did that Leicester’s Wing backs tried to follow the Chelsea Wingbacks into midfield, which made players like CHO have 1v1’s against Amartey when he got the ball and he destroyed him each time he ran at him and at the same time stretched the Leicester backline.

Leicester seemed to put Amartey on Hudson-Odoi and Albrighton on Chilwell particularly but because of the frequency at which Chiwell and CHO dropped deep to receive the ball, it meant those Leicester players respectively followed their man and created spaces for runs in behind the Leicester backline.

Here Chilwell inverts and drags Albrighton with him, which means Amartey is marking Hudson-Odoi, they link up and find a 3rd man in Jorginho..

Chilwell Inverts

Chilwell finds Jorginho

Jorginho spots Kante on the run

Jorginho immediately spots Kante on the run and delivers a delicious through ball from which Kante almost scores from..

Kante nearly scores via that pass

As I mentioned in my thread on Twitter on “ Tuchel’s inverted Fullbacks “, the aim is to have superiority and overload different areas of the pitch depending on the opposition's weakness. In this game, Leciester’s weakness was the setup of the midfield 2, not individually as Ndidi ad Soumare are very good players but the setup of the team made it easy for Chelsea to constantly overload and bypass them constantly. The front 3 for Chelsea took turns to drop deep and make it at least 3v2 against Leicester's midfield pivot, at times it was 4v2.

Here Leicester are in their settled mid-low block, but the pivot has no help whatsoever, Ndidi and Soumare don’t know who to pick up, Reece James inverts (Notice Kante covering for him at Wing back) and takes the attention of Ndidi, Hudson Odoi also becomes a passing option and has Soumare caught in 2 minds. So Silva is able to easily pick out Mount with a slick ball in between the lines, who could not find Havertz with his pass.

Reece James Inverting confusing Soumare

Silva is able to pick out Mount

Mount is unable to find Kai tho..

With only 2 passes Chelsea was through Leicester. Looking at Vardy in real time, he was furious Silva was able to pass to Mount so easily, but nothing changed.

We see another instance below where Tuchel was using inverted fullbacks to open up Leicester.

Silva picks out Reece with a great pass

Reece inverts and picks it up in midfield

Reece goes on a barraging run while Mount covers at wing back, but the final pass was lacking again, he had runners in Hudson Odoi, and also Havertz on the right hand side.

Apart from these mentioned above, Chelsea had their normal tactical habits of pressing, and counter-pressing, baiting teams to make them think they are playing out from the back with long balls into midfield from Silva and all but this was the major reason why we won this game as Chelsea won the battle from the midfield. Tielemans was sorely missed for Leicester as the few times they were able to get away from Chelsea’s press, they hardly picked out Vardy and Iheanacho’s (second half) runs out.

Leciester made it a 3 man midfield second half, but Maddison doesn’t have the work rate to make it that even. Chelsea still made use of that fact and the Wing backs to over load midfield when necessary. The game was effectively won in the first half.

Chelsea ran out somewhat comfortable winners against Leicester city and the game could have been at least 6-0 adding disallowed goals if Chelsea’s forwards timed their runs to perfection. Once again Tuchel’s tactical knowledge gives Chelsea the edge in a big game.

Written by @SeunMobolaji and Edited by @CFCPys