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Another year for Chelsea but the story hasn’t changed one bit. Cech may have made a blunder in the match but the blame for the overall result would have to be taken by AVB.With an almost full side at his disposal,it was a question of “Too many” for AVB than the typical injury questions that were poised to his predecessors. The mistakes made by AVB were more prima facie and conceptual in nature than the typical “If not A ,then B ” type of mistakes. Here are the 5 tactical mistakes by AVB
1.Not Replacing Drogba with TorresFor the first 45 minutes, Drogba hardly had a decent chance on goal. His passing percentage was just close to 50 % and wasn’t very comfortable dealing with three centrebacks. Even when an occasional ball was put through by Bosingwa, Drogba was nowhere to be found. Drogba had no influence whatsoever in the game and AVB was adamant for not taking him off at the right time.The fact that Drogba will be playing the African Cup of Nations means Torres will have to be given a chance before that for some decent gametime. Now it looks like Torres would be as good as a new January signing for Chelsea.
Drogba- Hardly had a chance on goal
2. Taking off Mata for Mikel:The rotation policy is sometimes effective for having minimum injuries but taking off your only creative spearhead was totally uncalled for. True, Martinez was going to make a double change to get two strikers to put the pressure back on Chelsea. But that would inevitably have happened whenever Chelsea got the lead. Mereiles would still have been decent in the Holding position with Lampard and Mata playing a more advanced role. This would have also resulted in Kalou getting better involved in the game with Mata’s presence. However without Mata,Chelsea look like the same side as last season; and obviously the result was something similar indeed.
Always Delightful: Never Complaining
3. Bringing in Malouda for SturridgeHow do you motivate a player who has scored in almost every game for the past 4 months? Certainly not by taking him off from the game. The one player who actually made the game watcheable was now substituted for someone who you knew would just slow the pace down.When Martinez had made the double swap, one of the motive was to see that Sturridge would be kept quiet on the flanks. In almost every battle,Sturridge would trick the Wigan players. Now with Sturridge gone and a ineffective Kalou taking his side of the flank,the advantage was now with Wigan. Malouda’s substitution could have been effective if it was slightly delayed.
Lesser subs: More Dances
4. Playing a 4-3-3 just like last SeasonOf Course with the substitutions at hand, this looks like a reasonable formation. But any fan can tell you by now that this formation doesn’t suit Chelsea anymore. Playing Drogba-Malouda-Kalou had been a tried and tested formation for the past 2-3 seasons.They haven’t been given enough playing time together,nor do all three have the firepower to replicate their form of yesteryears. If scoring wasn’t on the drawing board,then why did they have to get Malouda?They could easily have replaced Bosingwa with Paulo Ferreira. If there are reasons that he hasn’t played that many matches or would be worse than Bosingwa, then at least he could have played in a 5-man defense, between bosingwa and Ivanovic with Sturridge making the sacrifice.
5. Play the Youth: This could seem a little far fetched but our bench strength today didn’t show great deals of AVB’s philosophy. Josh McEachran was the only young player present and nobody fancied his chances getting picked up. Lampard was not having the best of days today but due to the inadequate bench,there was nobody to take his place.With Ramires and Luiz not playing, suddenly the bench squad doesn’t have enough quality. Chelsea needs to realize that while players like Malouda and Kalou have questions over their future at Chelsea ,McEachran and Lukaku are deemed as the future of Chelsea and need to be played. If players aren’t given a chance against relegation battling teams, then when else? AVB needs to make a decision: either buy better squad players or use the Youth in the games. Since the window hasn’t opened as yet,might as well give them a chance.If not,at least loan them out during the window.
Of course, the best reason to deny the mistakes is that We are giving our judgements from our comfort zone and aren’t in the managers’ shoes to make decisions in realtime. But the moment these kind of decisions were made by AVB, almost all the fans had seen this result coming. We are completely fine if the revolution takes time,and are also comfortable if some mistakes happen here and there. But please don’t make mistakes so obvious and repetitive that we grow tired of them.
