Watched the Chelsea v Servette game on CFC YT, as I missed it due to work. Wasn’t expecting a perfect performance as it’s still a new team and tactics so won’t be too harsh overall. Also noting that this is the 2nd 11 so not necessarily expecting perfect football either.
First 5 mins we came out the blocks like a gun. Inside the first minute, KDH picks the ball up in our half, plays a good 1-2 with Mudryk and is dribbling into that centre left side of the pitch. Guiu is waiting on the last man to run in behind but KDH goes into traffic and loses the ball, but wins it back and then finally plays Guiu in with a decent ball. Admiral that Guiu tried to stay on his feet but if he goes down there I think it’s at least an 80% chance we get a penalty though. Definitely think KDH needed to play the through ball for Guiu the first time instead of trying to dribble more centrally and pass it across field to Nkunku.
After the first 5 mins, Servette sort of dominated play for a good 20 mins or so, with us barely creating anything and defensively truly looking like a back 5 who have never played together as a set. Will say that Veiga looked pretty decent defensively when needed although quite a few last minute tackles.
It looks like with Maresca’s system, there seems to be set places on the pitch for players with limited interchangeability. I say this as when in possession Veiga seemed to stay within a 5x5m area of the pitch and at one point ran to stand on top of KDH (I think) and pushed him and pointed at him to stand elsewhere. The passing was also very pedestrian, with very little movement off the ball.
Also think that whatever WB inverts, that side will see more action as generally throughout the first half KDH and Mudryk saw most of the ball out of our attacking players, most likely due to Veiga being left footed and it being more natural for him to look to play the ball out that way. When trying to switch play from left to right it was far far too slow. From Mudryk to Neto would take anywhere between 6-10 passes at which point the whole Servette defence had switched sides and was pretty pointless. Not expecting a pinged pass from the LW (Mudryk) to whoever is out right in future but it needs to be done far quicker if we’re going to get any joy out of it.
By the 40 mins mark Nkunku seemed fed up of seeing little of the ball and he’d drifted left to occupy the same space as KDH. Think throughout the first half both Nkunku and Neto only really saw the ball from fast breaks off defensive set pieces which is a complete waste of their talent. Nkunku is probably one of our best technical and creative players so going forward we’ll need to work on being able to get both wings involved in the game more. Neto when he got the ball out on the RW looked creative and beat his man putting in some decent crosses.
Second half we again came out fast, looked like something was said at halftime as we seemed to get more balls out right to Nkunku and Neto in the first 10 mins or so. Great closing down and turnover for the KDH assist for the penalty. Again a few mins later Guiu fashioned himself a guilt edged chance with closing down the goalkeeper and then let himself down missing pretty much an open goal. Won’t be too harsh though as he’s only young and it’s only his first start for us. Think he made a mistake of trying to look where the GK was instead of just trying to take the shot first time, something I believe he’ll improve on with more experience.
The 3 substitutes around the 60th minute was fitness management for players still trying to get up to speed. Didn’t particularly like Palmer playing as a false 9 as it limits his overall involvement in the game. The subs quietened down the game up til the 75th minute where Enzo played a beautiful ball over the top for Madueke and he smashed it in at the near post. After that it was pretty dull for the most part. Defensively quite suspect.
Set pieces; corners especially we will need to work on a lot. Understand we have a new set piece coach who perhaps hasn’t had much time to work with the squad but attacking corners I didn’t really understand the 2 men on the corner spot although there were one or two decent ones. Defensively though we were very very poor. A better side would have likely scored 3 or 4 in that game.
Overall, it was an okay game, no player particularly stood out too much. All of the attacking players had a couple good moments, defensive side was pretty poor overall despite not conceding. In future I hope to see more decisiveness from our forwards: either playing a first time pass/ through ball or shot as there was quite a bit of hesitancy throughout. Also hope to see more incisiveness from the whole team.
I understand Maresca likes to keep the ball and recycle it but if every pass is a safe pass, we’ll never create any opportunities, so hopefully with more time we’ll see better chemistry and incisiveness in the future. The stats say we created 0 clear cut chances and only had 7 shots on target, which 3 of them were Guiu when he closed down the keeper. So still a lot of work to do but hoping to see better on the weekend. Think Maresca has some tough choices for the starting 11 imo.
Written by fuser August 24 2024 12:59:39
