Chelsea: Perfecting a team What makes a good football team? Drive, chemistry, resilience and individual talent certainly play a role, but ultimately, results and achievements are the benchmark against which all sports teams are measured. Having won three major international titles during the last year alone, new manager Thomas Tuchel has revitalized the club, which had only won two competitions in the previous 4 years.
Despite their recent trophies, they currently sit 16 points behind Premier League frontrunners Manchester City and have all but conceded their domestic league title aspirations for the season. Chelsea’s domestic struggles offer interesting insights into the making of a top-class football team, as well as the areas in which they could improve.
Inconsistent finishing
Chelsea’s defense efficiency is near-unmatched in the Premier League: with a mere three losses this season, only title contenders Manchester City (3L) and Liverpool (2L) can boast of similar numbers. However, their defensive success has not been replicated at the field’s other end: their current goal tally of 49 is only three-quarters that of either of their nearest rivals. Five Manchester City and three Liverpool players have netted 7 or more goals in the Premier league this season, but only Chelsea’s Mason Mount has reached this total.
The age-old adage “the best defense is a good offense” holds perfectly true in football: a prolific striker can compensate for the occasional defensive mishap, but no amount of good defending can make up for a lack of goals. Romelu Lukaku’s $97.5million transfer was initiated in order to bridge this goal gap, but he has as of yet failed to deliver more than 5 goals, leaving Chelsea with little hope of regaining the title.
Through admittedly amongst the best of their league, Chelsea’s goal tally trails that of their nearest rivals.
Chelsea’s defensive record is near-unmatched: only frontrunners Manchester city have conceded fewer goals (17).
The most obvious solution to this problem is to acquire more proven strikers, thus creating a greater depth of goalscoring talent and relieving some of the pressure resting on Lukaku. Borussia Dortmund’s Erling Haaland is a prime transfer target: at only 21 years of age, his 23 goals have made him one of Europe’s most highly coveted players, but his high-profile status make him a challenging target with a correspondingly elevated price tag.
Another alternative is Lille’s 22-year-old Jonathan David, whose 12 goals for the French Ligue 1 Champions have elevated his profile and made him another attractive long-term investment. Greater tactical variation could also hold the key to improving Chelsea’s goalscoring abilities. Thomas Tuchel’s reliance on a 3-4-2-1 formation has been a staple of his time at Chelsea but changing it out in favor of a 4-2-2-2 would place more attacking players further upfield, better supporting Lukaku and favoring a decidedly riskier, more goal-oriented style of play.
Dortmund’s Erling Haaland (left) and Lille’s Jonathan David (right) could be key to solving Chelsea’s scoring worries.
Managerial instability
In the roughly 19 years since Chelsea was purchased by Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich, the club has gone through 15 separate managerial stints as the strong desire for silverware dramatically increased managerial expectations. A consequence of such rapid turnaround is the lack of a distinctive playstyle. Adapting to a new manager takes time as the team adjusts to new tactics and formations, and since new managers are often quite active in the transfer window as they work to shape their squad, this can further disrupt group cohesion. In addition, it can take a football manager several transfer windows or even several seasons to fully implement their vision of a title-winning team. If fired prematurely, this could leave their successor with an incomplete team built around unfamiliar tactics and playstyles.
Thomas Tuchel will likely lead Chelsea into the post-Abramovich era
Thomas Tuchel has built an impressive team in relatively little time, which bodes well for his future at Chelsea, but he still requires time to work through his team’s goal-scoring difficulties. Giving him the burden of the doubt in case of an eventual dip in performance could be the key to building a team that remains successful in the long run. As the club enters a period of uncertainty following Abramovich’s recent decision to sell, putting faith in Tuchel’s leadership will improve Chelsea’s odds of regaining title contender status during the coming year.
Chelsea: Perfecting a team
Written by Sebastien Brown
