Chelsea have failed to beat Nottingham Forest, a team languishing in the 19th place in the Premier League standings. Raheem Sterling opened the scoring after a lucky rebound in the 16th minute but Serge Aurier equalised shortly after the hour's mark.
The Blues' performance was woeful, there are no two ways about that. The only case a draw against Forest could be acceptable is seeing their keeper Dean Henderson make tons of world-class saves. But it wasn't the case on Sunday: in fact, Kepa bailed Chelsea out on at least two occasions, making important saves on Brendan Johnson early in the first and second halves.
Stats say that Forest had five shots on target to Chelsea's two even though the Blues kept the ball for a whopping 73% of the time. It tells us that Graham Potter's men were in control of the ball but didn't know what to do with it.
Chelsea made 716 passes throughout the game — that's really a lot, especially in comparison with Forest's 215. Yet most of these passes weren't dangerous: only two of these were through balls. Thiago Silva completed the most passes (118 out of 127 attempted) but most of these were short passes to Koulibaly or Jorginho.
Chelsea kept passing sideways and backwards without moving the ball forward. Whenever they entered the opposition's third, they faced a saturated Forest defence and were forced into turnovers, which in turn led to dangerous counter-attacks.
Perhaps the key reason behind Chelsea's inability to move the ball into dangerous areas and create chances was the poor choice of tactics coupled with the wrong selection.
Here's how the Blues lined up:
Potter instructed Chelsea defenders to play a high line.
In this formation, Thiago Silva basically assumed the role of a deep-lying playmaker, rendering Jorginho useless. The Italy international made just 45 touches in comparison to 76 against Bournemouth on December 27.
Denis Zakaria played to the right of Jorginho and wasn't particularly helpful either. He was even less involved in the game, making 31 touches and 28 pass attempts. It was as if the Swiss international tried to let go of the ball as soon as possible.
Mason Mount, who played on the left side of the midfield triangle, was under par as well.
Notice how Jorginho (no. 5) and Zakaria (no. 26) were playing practically on the same line as the defenders:
Apparently, Potter's plan was for Zakaria and Mount to run into channels and wreak havoc on the opposition's defensive structure. The problem was that it worked only once, very early in the game when Mount had a good chance to score.
Koulibaly plays a smart ball from behind, Mount runs into the left-centre channel and receives the ball inside the box:
Mount does incredibly well to control the ball but fires it over:
The approach didn't work because Zakaria is better suited to play as a holding midfielder, destroying the opposition's attacks, and Mount is an attacker, not a midfielder. They just don't have the positional awareness and training to execute Potter's instructions.
It wasn't just about the midfield though. There was a big problem with the full-backs' offensive contribution, too.
Neither Cucurella nor Azpilicueta were able to create width going forward. Their heat maps show they stayed way too deep, failing to link up with wingers Sterling and Pulisic. Cucu and Dave produced three long balls, one cross, zero key passes and zero dribbles combined.
What about attackers? It was a shambolic performance by Chelsea's forward trio again. Pulisic, Havertz and Sterling combined for the goal and disappeared without a trace immediately after that.
For 72 minutes, Chelsea lacked a dedicated creator on the pitch. Mount is good at producing danger when he's close to the opposition's box but he played too deep to make any difference. Jorginho was barely involved in the game while neither Pulisic nor Sterling could do anything without support from full-backs.
When Ziyech was brought on with 18 minutes left to play, Chelsea suddenly woke up from their sleep and started playing football. Hakim created two chances in quick succession and we can only wonder how Aubameyang failed to connect to the Moroccan's cross.
Yet Ziyech in or Ziyech out, Chelsea's problems are far beyond the individual characteristics of the players Potter decides to give a nod to. It's about Potter repeatedly choosing the tactics that don't suit the players and picking players that don't fit into his tactics.
