Chelsea 1-1 Arsenal | Tactical THREAD
➡️ Cucurella seems to have Saka's number?
➡️ Gusto's best defensive performance?
➡️ Odegaard invisible but decisive, Palmer the opposite
➡️ Caicedo stepped up as defensive shield
➡️ Raya swept to perfection
➡️ Rice at LCM is too vanilla
Arsenal erred today by using Rice as a LCM off the ball, which meant he couldn't get to grips with Cole Palmer who arguably had his best big match display this season in terms of 'involvement'.
Having said that, Cole Palmer didn't make the most of it with some poor decision making in key moments but it was overall a step in the right direction as he didn't ghost but tried to impact the game.
His rival Odegaard had returned from injury and he was a ghost for the most part. Very little involvement but then when the key moment came, he managed to make it count with a great ball to Martinelli who put it away despite a torrid display prior to it.
Sanchez positioning was poor for the goal.
Despite Gusto's error for the goal, overall it was a tremendous display by him... he locked Martinelli up for the most part and as for Cucurella, we mentioned in our preview that he's one of the few LB's that Saka finds tough to face and he proved it again.
Great positioning, tenacious in the tackle and low centre of gravity. He was excellent and Chelsea can take a lot of heart from the performance of both defenders today.
Declan Rice at LCM. I am not seeing it.
Doesn't have enough creativity and goal threat for such an advanced role, doesn't really progress the game from that role, cuts onto his right too much which makes him predictable and it means taking him away from what he's best at...
Shielding the back 4.
Finally Maresca moved Neto to the opposite flank in-game.
I'd like to see these shifts happen more often to keep opponents guessing and give his selected players a second wind.
When Neto is overexposed to left wing, teams can evetually get used to it but he did do well vs White, but it seemed to freshen him up even more when he switched flanks and he was so much more sharper than Madueke... blitzed through Arsenal with that goal.
Madueke needs to rest up for now.
Just two players I forgot to mention, Caicedo did fantastically today, operating deeper than Lavia but really protected the right flank and helped out Gusto as well as CDM.
Raya for Arsenal, some really good headers when he came off the line and was very alert throughout.
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