A Blue Up North reviews Chelsea’s humiliating defeat away to Tottenham Hotspur.
This weekend saw a return of Premier League action after the final international break of 2018. For Chelsea and, in particular their new manager Maurizio Sarri, this match was going to be one of their biggest tests of the season. After all, as far as all Blues fans are concerned, this match is an absolute must not lose.
The Blues would take their 18 match unbeaten run this season to Wembley Stadium as they played an in form Tottenham Hotspur team. After completely dominating their North London rivals for nearly 30 years, the balance of power has been shifting in recent seasons. However The Blues have still regularly shown strength in character to retrieve a result.
Saturday was definitely not one of these occasions.
Mauricio Pochettino had made 4 changes to his starting XI that beat Crystal Palace 1-0 last time out.
Serge Aurier, Eric Dier, Christian Eriksen and Son Heung-min come into the side. Erik Lamela and Lucas Moura are among those on the bench and they joined by Jan Vertonghen, who has not played since 29 September because of a hamstring injury.
Maurizio Sarri named an unchanged side and bench from the fairly disappointing 0-0 draw with Everton.
Alvaro Morata retained his place up front, while Olivier Giroud, Cesc Fabregas, Ross Barkley and Pedro were among the substitute options.
Right from the off, this looked like a complete mismatch. Chelsea have heavily relied upon high levels of possession football to overpower their opponents so far this season under Sarri, but struggled to gain any control with the ball under the home side’s pressingly game.
Spurs themselves eased through a very exposed Chelsea defence, and within 16 minutes were completely dominating with a 2-0 lead. The Blues looked shell shocked as they were outplayed by their hosts, who looked in commanding form.
Yes, there were plenty of individual and team errors from the away side and we can all point to and analyse each one of them, but there was something far more worrying for all who follow The Blues.
There was no evidence of any of the players or, more surprisingly, manager Sarri, able to do anything about their predicament. Despite some shouts from the defence, the midfield remained far too far away from the back 4 and the team just kept on with their original set up and tactics.
Mistakes do happen and a team can be set up incorrectly, but to appear to have no thoughts on how to adjust and resolve the dire situation that they found themselves in was a shock.
When Sarri has arrived he immediately transformed the squad into a very resolute team who have remained unbeaten in their opening 18 matches, but surely they have also been working on tweaking the set up or a plan b. Being bereft of either of these could cause further problems in their upcoming matches. The worry would be that other Premier League managers will watch video replays of this match and follow Pochettino’s tactics that nullified Chelsea’s possession based style.
Admittedly Chelsea should have had a penalty on 12 minutes when Foyth clearly fouled Eden Hazard whilst the score was only 1-0. There were spells when The Blues were starting to gain a foothold in the match but they were usually snubbed out by Spurs goals.
Sarri did revert to no strikers with his first substitution as Pedro replaced the ineffective Alvaro Morata. The Spanish striker left the pitch after 3 more offsides had put him top of that list this season and with no attempts on target in 58 minutes. The Blues did start to maintain possession better and pressed further upfield. Then when Olivier Giroud was introduced on 76 minutes, Chelsea appeared to have more threat. Although the Frenchman’s well taken goal ended as only a consolation, it nearly inspired a totally unexpected fight back.
Maurizio Sarri was completely honest in his post match interview as he stated that everyone played poorly. He also hit the nail on the head when he summed up where team played so badly – “in all directions physically, mentally, technically and tactically.”
The best teams can usually get away with playing poorly in one or two of these categories, but you are in trouble when looking so dire in all 4. On the other hand, it is rare that a team play outstandingly in all 4 categories and sadly Spurs were.
As Sarri’s unbeaten run came to a crashing end and Spurs’s third Premier League victory over Chelsea in their last 4 matches took the North Londoners above their rivals into third place in the league.
It seems incredible that with such a stunning start to his first season at the helm, the Italian now finds his side only in fourth place after his first defeat. Surely this is the truest indication that the best teams in the country are reaching new heights that have never been seen before. This really is a baptism of fire for Chelsea’s new manager. Their reaction to this defeat will be interesting to watch. Sarri has arrived from the most tactically aware league in the world but his footballing knowledge will be stretched to its limits over the coming weeks, especially with 2 matches every week until the new year.
Let’s hope the whole club can put this shocker out of their mind as soon as possible.
Written by Jon Ellis, home and away season ticket holder. Follow him on Twitter @ClitheroeBlue
