ChelseaAnd Manchester UnitedThe two sides fought to a tight 1-1 draw at Stamford Bridge Saturday evening.
Jorginho’s 87th-minute penalty looked to have won Chelsea the match, but Casemiro’s header deep in injury time saw the points shared.
The Athletic asked Liam Twomey, Nick Miller and Liam Tharme to dissect the main talking points…
Potter recognizes danger early
Graham Potter is often called a tactical tweaker. He showed it in the first period against United.
Chelsea set up initially in a 3-4-5-2-1 formation, with their box midfielders and wing backs. But they were unable to create a cohesive team and break out of their own half.
The pass network below shows this shape from the first half — the larger the circle, the greater the number of touches taken by that player, with the location of players reflecting their average touches. Blue lines show players who have made five passes or more. Larger lines signify higher passing frequencies among team-mates.
The absence of lines from the central defenders into any of the midfielders or forwards underlines the issue — Chelsea, with three central defenders, had an initial overload when playing out but were outnumbered in midfield.
United pressed out from a 4-1-4-1. Pushing Christian Eriksen further upfield out of the double pivot and alongside the forward three, in order to match Chelsea’s double pivot.
They were often able chip over Jadon SanchoAnd into Cesar AzpilicuetaUnited’s central coverage prevented the ball from moving further forward. Chelsea didn’t win enough aerial duels, and they were most at risk when they were grabbing loose balls in front the defensive line.
They only had 35% possession within the first 35 minutes of Potter twisting and replacing Marc CucurellaWith Mateo Kovacic.
Chelsea changed to a 4-2-4-2 diamond. This allowed them to match their opponents and added reinforcements in the central midfield. This helped them quell United’s dominance, just as they looked like being overwhelmed.
Liam Tharme
Cucurella continues to struggle for impact
The natural assumption was that Graham Potter’s arrival at Chelsea would be very good news for Cucurella. A head coach needs a team of loyal players on the pitch. Who better than the player who has quadrupled his transfer worth under him at Brighton?
Cucurella’s reality has been rather different. Since starting Potter’s first match in charge against RB Salzburg last month, he has completed 90 minutes only once, so it shouldn’t have come as a surprise that he was the player sacrificed in order to enact a first-half tactical change against United.
Ben Chilwell has been favoured at left wing-back for the two most important matches of Potter’s tenure to date against AC Milan, while Cucurella has primarily been deployed on the left of the back three — the role he first surprisingly played for Brighton against Chelsea at Stamford Bridge last season.
Cucurella was replaced after 35 minutes (Photo by Getty Images).
That particular experiment hasn’t looked convincing so far. Cucurella’s size has made him a target for Chelsea’s opponents and his positioning has caused concern on a few occasions — not least leaving the space that Marcus Rashford ran into for the clearest chance of the first half at Stamford Bridge.
Cucurella has plenty of time to disprove those who claim he was vastly overpriced, but these past few weeks have underlined that Potter’s presence is no guarantee of his success.
Liam Twomey
Sancho fails at the mark
Jadon Sancho is only 22. This is still a young age by any standard. But he’s also in his fifth season as a first-team regular in serious football: three for Borussia Dortmund, and starting his second for Manchester United. In football terms, that isn’t so young.
After a sloppy 52-minute match against Chelsea, he was forced out. While he may have sought comfort in the fact that it was to enable a tactical change to his team, there was never any doubt about Erik ten Hag’s willingness to sacrifice an attacker to improve the centre of his midfield.
Sancho has one assist and two goals this season. Those numbers aren’t great, and neither are the more advanced statistics. Statsbomb data shows that he is expected to assist 0.8 in his ten games so far this term. This puts him at 79th place in the Premier League behind Rayan Ait-Nouri (Gabriel Magalhaes) and Sean Longstaff.
It’s not a great return for a player that we can no longer excuse as a promising youth. United’s attacking options are relatively limited, especially with You Know Who out of favour and Anthony Martial injured. They need everything they can from the senior forwards available to them: at the moment, Sancho simply isn’t providing that.
Nick Miller
Chelsea’s low xG catches up with them
Were it not for Casemiro’s towering late header, Potter would be proving a lucky general as well as a good one. This was the third consecutive Premier League game in which Chelsea’s opponents beat them on expected goals (xG) — a run that has yielded five points from a possible nine, and a victory that appeared highly unlikely for long stretches.
Chelsea’s defence was uncharacteristically vulnerable against Aston Villa and Brentford, but the biggest theme of the last three matches is that their attack is nowhere near threatening enough. Prior to Scott McTominay gifting Jorginho a penalty chance, Potter’s team were on course to register an xG of 1.0 or less for the third league game in a row.
Jorginho scored the spot goal, but Chelsea failed create any other good opportunities (Photo: Getty Images).
Individually, there are causes for concern: Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang has fizzled out after a bright start, Kai Havertz continues to underwhelm and the confidence that underpinned Raheem Sterling’s finishing in his early weeks as a Chelsea player appears to have disintegrated. Mason Mount is the only player who is playing in big minutes and is clearly on the rise, although Christian Pulisic and Armando Broja have also made bright appearances.
However, a large part of the problem seems to be systemic. Chelsea’s default 3-4-2-1 formation relies too much on the playmaking of Reece James for attacking thrust, and none of their central midfielders offer consistent creation or line-breaking passes. They were unable to control the game against United in the first half, so Potter decided that a change was necessary.
Although Potter appeared to have brought Chelsea closer towards the defensive standard that they had maintained in the Thomas Tuchel era’s first year, he is still not ready to upgrade the misfiring attack which often flummoxed his predecessor.
Liam Twomey
Casemiro makes a remarkable leap
Casemiro screamed, beat his chest and let out the primal roar that usually comes only after an injury-time goal.
Most of us knew that the Brazilian would help United dig themselves out of some holes this season. We thought it would be strengthening their midfield and providing them with the defensive balance they’ve been lacking for so long. Maybe some experience.
That head certainly wasn’t calm after he used it to salvage a point from a game that United probably should have wrapped up in the first half, rising and arching his back and snapping his neck at the far post to loop the ball over Kepa ArrizabalagaIt eventually crossed the line at this point. Just. It’s not the sort of header you expect from a defensive midfielder, but given the moment and given the level of difficulty, you’ll rarely see a better one this season.
The cross needs a mention too. The balls coming from the deep left must be bloody good enough to pick out any useful person in the box. But there was enough fizz to go around. Luke Shaw’s sensational ball to find Casemiro. It would have been a missed opportunity for the Brazilian. Scott McTominayAfter he had already brainlessly accepted the penalty, he was able to call on a backup.
Officially, the goal might be credited as a Kepa Arrizabalaga own goal, given that it was his touch — after the one that tipped the ball onto the post — that took it over the line. But while there isn’t a ‘moral goals’ column in the statistics and you won’t get the points in Fantasy Premier LeagueWe all know the man who saved United.
Nick Miller
Casemiro scores his first goal for Manchester United. (Photo: Getty Images).
Under Potter, Chelsea concedes a league goal
There had been some heroics from Kepa in recent weeks — and he came extremely close to keeping that Casemiro header out — but Chelsea’s Premier League clean sheet record under Potter was shattered by United’s late goal.
An injury-time goal prevented what would’ve been a sixth consecutive clean sheet across all competitions.
WHAT A HEADER CASEMIRO🤯
Manchester United equalised🔴 pic.twitter.com/U3ari0WeI4
— Sky Sports Premier League (@SkySportsPL) October 22, 2022
An underlying reason for Tuchel’s departure and Potter’s arrival was the sheer volume of goals shipped in the German’s second 50 games in charge.
At 67 minutes, the game was over. It had been 10 hours since Kepa conceded. All 22 shots were saved by the Spaniard in that period. Based on post-shot expected goals data, he came into the game having prevented the maximum number of Premier League goals this season.
The underlying numbers show that Chelsea have been far from porous under Potter — the 54 shots they have faced since Potter’s arrival is more than nine Premier League teams and those chances were worth 5.4xG, worse than 11 sides.
Liam Tharme
Varane’s World Cup fear
Sometimes, players can tell. They don’t need scans, x-rays or expert medical opinion: they know when an injury is serious, or at least when an injury will have consequences.
That’s why Raphael VaraneHe could be in tears at the same time and walk away from the pitch without any assistance, even though he had suffered what seemed to be an innocuous tweak. It was not only his game over. Another great performance and an additional instalment of the burgeoning partnership. Lisandro MartinezHis words were cut short, but he was aware that his World CupYou might also be able to do it.
There are so many arguments against where this World Cup is being held, but there are also so very many about when it’s being held, beyond ‘it’s just a bit weird’. Normal course of events, if a player sustains an injury during the season, they will have time to heal before the tournament begins.
There’s still a month before France’s first game, but their squad must be finally confirmed by November 13: Varane therefore has three weeks to convince Didier Deschamps that he is ready to help France defend their title. Given France’s squad has already been riven with injuries this season, you wonder whether he will want to gamble on Varane.
Of course, we don’t yet know how serious the injury is. Maybe it’s not too bad and Varane will be back in time. But Erik ten Hag broke off from watching a Chelsea attack to console his player: from that perspective at least, it doesn’t look great.
Nick Miller
(Photo: Chloe Knott – Danehouse/Getty Images)
