Alex Keble analyses Manchester City's 1-1 draw with Chelsea that saw the champions lose ground to Liverpool and Arsenal in the title race.
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To take even a point against Man City you need to be good and you need to be lucky. In a 1-1 draw at the Etihad Stadium on Saturday evening, Chelsea were both.
Mauricio Pochettino’s reactive 4-4-2 largely stunted the hosts and few would argue that he won the tactical battle, yet Erling Haaland missed a series of chances that could so easily have given us a different outcome.
But some version of that story is always true when it comes to Man City and dropped points. Pep Guardiola’s side will always create chances. There will always be periods of domination to ride out and moments when you simply cross your fingers and hope for the best.
Those Haaland misses, then, do not take away from a largely excellent Chelsea performance that was reminiscent, for the first hour at least, of Aston Villa’s 1-0 win against Man City.
Here’s how Pochettino’s tactics put Chelsea ahead, but also how his formation switch for the final 20 minutes invited the pressure that led to Rodri’s equaliser.
Gallagher on Rodri defines aggressive 4-4-2
“Our rhythm was not proper,” was Guardiola’s assessment of his team’s first half, which, intentional or not, is a compliment to how Chelsea stopped Man City from playing.
Pochettino lined up in a stubborn 4-4-2 deployed in a narrow midblock that refused to be drawn into a high press, hence Man City’s 70 per cent possession.
Instead Chelsea stayed compact, squeezed the middle, and via the first line of Conor Gallagher and Nicolas Jackson denied Man City the option of playing through Rodri.
Most of the time, Man City’s back three simply had no passing option through the middle, forcing them to shuttle the ball out wide, where Jeremy Doku and Phil Foden would then be crowded out towards the touchline.
Lots of teams try this at Man City, but the difference with Chelsea was the aggression in their play and the pressing traps enacted in the middle of the pitch: they made 35 tackles and interceptions, which is their second-highest total of the 2023/24 Premier League season so far.
Rodri was hounded constantly by Gallagher, whose tenacity in the press defined Chelsea’s off-the-ball attitude at the Etihad. Kevin De Bruyne and Julian Alvarez, when not entirely squeezed out by the visitors’ system, were also the target of sharp pressing traps from all sides.
Jackson-led counters were executed perfectly
That was only one side of the equation, and Pochettino’s decision to concede possession and territory would not have worked without some pinpoint counter-attacking moves that relieved pressure, got Chelsea up the pitch, and led to their opening goal.
Whenever the ball was turned over (and it happened fairly often, such was the ferocity of Chelsea’s tackling) Raheem Sterling, Jackson and Cole Palmer immediately burst forward in the hope of breaking Man City’s high defensive line.
Guardiola’s defenders seemed unprepared for such a high-risk approach here, and certainly they struggled to cope with the way Gallagher and Palmer popped up in the No 10 zone to play one-twos that set the forwards away.
Enzo Fernandez’s long balls and the Chelsea defenders’ direct passing over the top were clearly part of a sophisticated and well-drilled Pochettino plan, which peaked, of course, with Sterling’s opener.
The way Jackson dropped short and flicked the ball to Gallagher, before running in behind, typified his superb individual performance. Note how many Chelsea players are busting a gut to get involved in the counter.
Sterling finishes off a fine team move. 😎#CFC | #MciChe pic.twitter.com/SsEd5hVw0O
— Chelsea FC (@ChelseaFC) February 17, 2024
Pochettino’s second-half subs invite pressure
However, after Man City upped the tempo in the second half, forcing Chelsea into a deeper position than they would have liked, arguably Pochettino played into Guardiola’s hands with a series of negative moves that invited pressure.
The first half was defined by Chelsea’s bravery in possession: they played assertively through the Man City press to avoid being penned in. But in the second, they nervously dropped deeper, ultimately conceding an equaliser once the Man City players had crowded on top of them.
Chelsea never quite got back into their groove in the second half but they were not helped by a tactical change from the manager.
Sterling: Take the point but we could have won
In the 71st minute Palmer was substituted for Trevoh Chalobah and Chelsea moved to a 5-3-2, an out-and-out defensive formation, virtually guaranteeing a deep defensive line and a 20-minute Man City onslaught.
Sure enough, by sitting so deep, Chelsea let Man City’s playmakers get on the ball 30 yards from goal, whereas previously they had been isolated and surrounded by Chelsea’s 4-4-2.
The image below, from just a few seconds before De Bruyne drives forward and Man City equalise, highlights the problem. De Bruyne had no such space in the first half because Chelsea refused to drop so deep.
Haaland off-day is the defining feature
For all Chelsea’s tactical intelligence and later mild collapse into caution, we should not avoid the simpler explanation of a result that few expected.
Haaland has scored in only one of his last seven matches in all competitions, and on Saturday evening he failed to score from nine shots, which is a personal record without hitting the back of the net.
In fact, Haaland personally amassed an Expected Goals (xG) of 1.71, missing three huge chances that on any other day he would have scored, while Man City “won” the xG battle by 3.0 to 1.6.
For all of Chelsea’s defensive resolve, then, in an alternate reality, Haaland is clinical, Man City go 1-0 up, and the visitors’ 30 per cent possession is repackaged as passive.
But instead Chelsea got lucky. That alone isn’t enough to take a point from the Etihad - but you don’t stand a chance without it.