Date: 4th April 2014 at 3:39pm
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Managers of Football teams like to make plans. In football the devil is usually in the detail, and such planning can often make the difference in terms of the result, especially in tight matches such as a Champions’ League quarter final.

Jose Mourinho had a plan. His plan did not involve Fernando Torres, the player in the Chelsea squad who wears the number nine shirt. Of all Chelsea’s misfiring strikers, it is arguably Torres who has incurred the ‘Special One’s’ wrath the most. Many would say that after the display in the defeat to Crystal Palace that Torres did not deserve a place in the starting eleven for such an important match as a Champions’ League quarter final. That being said, Torres goal scoring record has been much better in European competition than it has domestically.

But Jose’s plan did not include Torres. Instead, the plan was to play Andre Schurrle in the advanced role as a ‘false’ number nine. On paper this did not seem to be a bad plan and Jose is often cautious in the first leg of a Champions’ League match away from home. Paris Saint-Germain pose an attacking threat, so packing the midfield, keeping it tight and setting the team up not to get beaten with the option of hitting PSG on the counter with Schurrle running on to the ball was a good plan. As long as Chelsea could stay in the tie after the first leg then they could finish the job in the second leg at Stamford Bridge. It was a good plan, a Jose Mourinho plan and he liked it. After all, a 1-0; 0-1; 0-0 or 1-1 have all been favourite results for Jose Mourinho in the first leg away in a Champions’ League tie.

The last time a Chelsea manager so publicly ditched the £50 million striker that is Fernando Torres in a Champions League away match was against Juventus in 2012. Hazard played as the false number nine and Chelsea lost 3-0. That was Robbie Di Matteo’s last match in charge. He was summarily dismissed after the game, his dismissal rumoured to be for having the ‘front’ to drop Mr Abramovich’s favourite player – Fernando Torres. But this is 2014 and Jose Mourinho has less to prove than Di Matteo, and perhaps more crucially, Torres has perhaps lost the support of his ‘Roman’ Emperor.

The pre-match talk had been all about the impact that the self-proclaimed best striker in the world – Zlatan Ibrahimovic – would make on the game. PSG were not to be taken lightly with an array of expensive talent, and an impressive 28 match unbeaten home record, but Ibrahimovic the talisman for PSG has never really done it against an English side apart from one performance for Barcelona against Arsenal. This was to be his first match against Chelsea.

When you make a plan, what you don’t want is for it to fall apart within 3 minutes, but for Mourinho that is precisely what happened.

It was Ibrahimovic who robbed David Luiz in midfield which indirectly led to the opening goal, although that was the extent of his involvement in it, and it was the brilliant Lavezzi 611d44ba-69a0-41ed-a25b-7606e8ad7915-460x276who capitalised on a poor John Terry header by controlling it on his chest and burying a half volley into the back of the net. Terry was off balance as he headed the ball, possibly mindful of not repeating the own goal he scored on Saturday, but arguably Petr Cech was equally culpable in not coming out to catch the cross. Fingers should also be pointed at defensive midfielders Luiz and Ramires for allowing acres of space for Lavezzi and Cavani in the penalty area.

Three minutes had elapsed and already Jose Mourinho’s plan was in ruins.

After the early set back Chelsea began to exert some control in midfield, and PSG rather than turning the screw sat back on their 1-0 lead. But chances for the first twenty five minutes were few and far between for Chelsea.  If you have no striker you need to extract maximum advantage from your set pieces. This season Chelsea’s set pieces have been poor and last night was no exception.

Thankfully Chelsea were given the opportunity to benefit from a set piece that only required accuracy from 12 yards, when they were awarded a penalty.

The energetic Willian made a good run down the right and speculatively cut the ball in to the penalty area. PSG Captain Thiago Silva rashly dived in on his Brazilian compatriot Oscar as he approached the ball giving the Serbian referee an easy decision to make. A penalty it most definitely was. Up stepped Eden Hazard who coolly dispatched the penalty. 1-1 and Chelsea were deservedly back in the game.

043012_50773_psg_chelsea_kecilAt 1-1, the plan was most certainly back on track.  Chelsea were controlling midfield largely thanks to PSG nervously giving the ball away. PSG may have a lot of talent funded by the extreme wealth of their Qatari owners, but they have not yet scaled the heights of European football. In the first half they played with a brittle belief suggesting they don’t believe they belong at this level. They were looking to a leader, a man who had been there and done it all before, a man with self-belief in abundance. They looked to their talisman Zlatan Ibrahimovic.  Ibrahimovic was not there and in truth was largely anonymous.

On 39 minutes the ball came across the PSG penalty area to the left wing where Hazard approached menacingly. He smacked a half volley back across the goal eluding the desperate dive from PSG ‘keeper Salvatore Sirigu. It hit the post and rebounded safely. A goal for Chelsea then could have been the defining moment in the tie with two away goals. The plan would have been deemed a success. Who needs strikers when Hazard can bag a brace of goals? It would have been well deserved at that point as Chelsea were in control of the game. It was not be. The best laid plans and all that.

Chelsea came out in the second half and clearly their plan had changed. The brief was now to sit on the away goal, not concede and protect the 1-1. Not a bad plan at all and one we have seen many times before.

I am not entirely sure that the plan encompassed defending too deep inviting PSG on to Chelsea though, and in the process isolating Schurrle out of the game. There was no out ball. PSG were attacking down the flanks and regaining control, looking threatening in the process. Time for a change of plan!

Plan B came in the guise of Fernando Torres coming on for Andre Schurrle on 58 minutes, the idea being as Jose Mourinho said in his post-match interview: “I thought Fernando could give is a bit (pause) more”. Before we could see whether this was in fact a good change of plan, disaster struck.Soccer - UEFA Champions League - Quarter Final - First Leg - Paris Saint-Germain v Chelsea - Parc des Princes

One of the main criticisms of David Luiz is that he makes poor decisions. In the 60th minute he gave his detractors a perfect example. Rather than shepherding the PSG winger in to the corner and away from danger, Luiz stupidly fouled the player. There was no need, and yet another free-kick had been given away, even more stupid considering the ability that Lavezzi had already shown with his pin point delivery of free kicks. Sure enough Lavezzi put in the kind of free kick that gives defences nightmares, just in that no-man’s land area on the 6 yard line. It failed to connect with everyone but the hapless David Luiz, who in attempting the impossible by trying to clear the ball as he faced his own goal, managed only to bundle it in for an own goal.

It would be easy to castigate Luiz for the own goal, but in reality the bigger mistake was conceding the free-kick so needlessly in the first place, and the defence’s positioning for the free kick was more than questionable.

This changed the game. PSG and their hitherto quiet home crowd sensed that Chelsea were there for the taking, and their tails were now up. For a period of 15 minutes the game opened up as Chelsea countered repeated PSG attacks with forays of their own. PSG as an attacking threat looked far more dangerous after Ibrahimovic pulled up with a hamstring injury on 66 minutes that will keep him out of the return leg. His pacey replacement Lucas Moura looked dangerous, and if PSG opt for a counter attacking game next week his speed will be a major concern.

Mourinho substituted Oscar for Lampard, switching Ramires to the right and Hazard to play centrally off Torres, but to little avail. It looked like both PSG and Chelsea were settling for the 2-1 in the final 15 minutes. In itself not an unacceptable result for either side although one that would possibly favour Chelsea in the second leg.

PSG-vs-Chelsea-FCBut an edgy evening for Chelsea ended as miserably as it had begun. With 2 minutes of injury time to go, PSG substitute Pastore somehow managed to elude the challenges of Azpilicueta and Willian near the right hand corner flag. He then skinned Frank Lampard as he sped in to the box before unleashing a clinical drive beating Petr Cech low at his near post.

Whatever happened to players corralling the ball by the corner flag in the dying minutes of a game to waste time? An English manager would have been apoplectic with rage but to be fair to Laurent Blanc and Pastore they went for the third goal that could be a killer blow for Chelsea’s Champions’ League aspirations this season.

In truth, and without denigrating Pastore’s skill in a well-executed goal, it was the third time the Chelsea defence had let themselves down by conceding a needless goal. Surely Pastore should not have been allowed to beat three Chelsea players in such a dangerous position so easily, and Petr Cech will rightly be very unhappy at not getting down quickly enough and conceding a goal at his near post.

After the match a contrite Gary Cahill (although he had no need to be as one of Chelsea’s best performers during the match) confirmed that it was “a horrible time to concede” such a “sloppy goal”. After a season where the Chelsea defence has been so impregnable and indeed has gone a long way towards putting Chelsea near the top of the Premier League, it was ironic that their mistakes have now heaped the pressure on the misfiring strikers to get Chelsea out of a hole next week.

But as both Cavani and Lavezzi will remember from their time at Napoli, you can’t write Chelsea off when they are 3-1 down in a Champions’ League tie. As Jose Mourinho himself pointed out after the match the return leg will be “difficult but not impossible, nothing in football is impossible”.

The real difficulty that Chelsea have is that they still play a style of football requiring a strong striker who can hold the ball up on his own and bring in others or create chances for himself. When Chelsea beat Napoli against the odds in 2012 they had Didier Drogba, a striker who was arguably the best in the world at doing precisely that. The truth is that for all his poor form, Fernando Torres has never been that type of striker, and haunted by the ‘Ghost of Drogba’ sadly never will.

Nevertheless, all Chelsea supporters will be hoping that the ‘spirit’ of that fantastic night against Napoli two years ago can be resurrected next Tuesday, and that is something you cannot plan for!

Chelsea supporters celebrate an unlikely victory against Napoli in the Champions’ League 2012 having been 3-1 down from the 1st leg:

 

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