London is Blue Dispatch #078

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It is no surprise that the floodgates opened in the second half, because Chelsea’s most important player wasn’t on the pitch for the first. Familiar anxieties saw stomachs dropping to their absolute nadirs, as gilt-edged set-pieces were wasted one after the other. For their first ten shots, Chelsea managed just the one on target. Morecambe had done their homework, and for 39 minutes they held on, before an unlucky deflection on a Tosin shot put them behind.

Chelsea’s struggles in front of goal for a half, against a League Two side in the relegation zone, were a continuation of their recent struggles in the final 3rd. The Blues have struggled repeatedly against a similar caliber of teams – one employing an out-of-possession structure with 5 defenders or 5 midfielders, and it is not a coincidence. Fulham, Palace, Everton, Morecambe all have noticed have the same thing – Chelsea’s half-spaces are dead space.

Enzo Maresca’s game model since his Leicester days has stayed quite honest to its core principles – play through the middle, draw opponents in; then play through them if you can, or find the isolated wide players. At Leicester, in the Championship with the best squad, it worked a treat. His wingers, Fatawu and Mavididi both thrived as touchline width-holders, enjoying the prospect of taking their fullbacks 1v1. Key to isolating the wingers were consistent, surging underlaps by his 8s – Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall and Wilfred Ndidi, who selflessly attacked the byline to take away additional attention from Leicester’s wingers and to find advantageous opportunities to deliver high-value cutbacks.

In the first half against Morecambe, the Blues began in a 3-2-4-1 in possession, Felix and Nkunku took up roles of the 8/10 hybrids but for contrasting reasons, did not provide any off-ball thrust. Every time Neto or Tyrique George received the ball wide, Morecambe simply doubled (sometimes tripled) up on them, forcing them to pass back. Felix, for all his nifty on-ball wizardry, is not a selfless underlapper. Nkunku, a Lamborghini perpetually stuck in first gear, offered very little support on the right.

This is not a one-off. Maresca has struggled to figure out where his underlaps will come from in this Chelsea side for quite some time. Gusto has been used as an attacking midfielder, but he possesses limited vision and technical ability in the half-spaces. His crossing is his strongest asset, but Chelsea have no height in the frontline or at the backpost to capitalize.

All 8s have been exiled – Chukwuemeka and Casadei, stellar 8s at youth level are set to depart, while Dewsbury-Hall has looked a shadow of his former self after injuries. Reece James and Ben Chilwell, both strong off-ball runners and creators, have been ravaged by injuries. The replacements at rightback have been the out-of-form Gusto, Axel Disasi, Wes Fofana and Josh Acheampong, none known for their off-ball running.

Palmer in the right 10 slot is an enigma; it is no surprise that he and Madueke are the PL’s most creative double act, generating 21 chances for each other. However, he seldom underlaps ahead of the ball, preferring to use Madueke as a pressure magnet to find some breathing room. The left 8 though has required novel solutions, like playing Enzo Fernandez in an advanced role to box-crash, but even that has proved an issue with Enzo struggling to hit accurate deliveries on his weaker left foot.

Maresca reverted to the other player who has played the left 10 slot efficiently and it changed the game. Marc Cucurella immediately positioned himself higher than Veiga had in the first half, placing himself between Morecambe’s rightback and right-centerback. His first major contribution was to underlap between them when George received on the right; on his stronger foot, he produced the first cutback of the half and a vital second goal.

Felix’s smoothly hit 5^th may have taken all the shine, but once more, it was Cucurella’s underlap that momentarily turned a tight 3v3 into a loose 1v1 for Felix. He proceeded to jink and lose his marker, creating the vital separation for his goal. Aside from Tosin’s long range effort, Cucurella’s role and willingness to move off-the-ball, which is sometimes sorely lacking in a squad full of ball-dominant magicians, made the difference in the end. Tyrique came alive in the 2nd on the left because of the support, while Sancho on the right offered glimpses of his rarely seen movement on the right, driving diagonally inside to open space for Gusto to gallop into.

All of this Maresca must have certainly made note of, and something the squad planners will be keeping a keen eye on. In a system where one of the wingers almost never has support from a fullback, Maresca will have to find a way to get his wingers firing again. And that won’t happen when your central players simply occupy the right spaces; it will happen when they start creating them too. Maresca has innovated and adapted well so far, and this opportunity might just provide the ideal challenge for a budding PL manager.