These last two days have felt even busier at Chelsea than January was, with all the Mauricio Pochettino stuff going on and everything else that comes with it. All the inside info coming out, and me having to put in my own hard research to find out what is actually going on, it’s been mad.
And let’s just throw another Chelsea game into the mix for some fun, shall we!? I’m dreading it….
So basically, I couldn’t be doing with another normal match preview and I think that’s partly because I’ve been so mentally busy these last two days but also, I’ really don’t have much care for the game and I’m certainly not looking forward to it. As I said, I’m numb to it.
However, Mauricio Pochettino can help himself in this game by making the switch to a back three. Whether he is fighting for his future or not in this game remains a debate, but I will always want Chelsea to win football matches no matter the circumstances, and to give ourselves the best chance of doing that, we have to now go pragmatic.
I’m not saying this is the answer to our problems and we will now start winning matches if we change this, and I’m not usually even a fan of the back three. But this setup will give us the very best chance of getting something out of games going forward, starting with Aston Villa tonight.
This is my pick:
I know some of you don’t want to talk about protecting Thiago Silva and that’s fine, but it’s way more than just doing that for me.
By the way, I don’t think for one minute that Pochettino will drop Conor Gallagher, so if he does switch to a back three, which Nizaar Kinsella of The Evening Standard is reporting he is considering doing, then I’ll be intrigued to see what he goes with. Because for me, in this formation, Gallagher only makes the bench.
Ben Chilwell is always going to be better as a wingback. There are valid arguments to start Carney Chukwuemeka over Nicolas Jackson and put Christopher Nkunku as a false 9 – I’m certainly not against that, love Carney.
This also allows both Cole Palmer and Nkunku to play more inverted and in their better positions. with wingbacks overlapping. And of course, the most important thing about this is that it makes us more compact and should make us more solid defensively after leaking goals lately.
But none of this matters anyway because apparently our head coach doesn’t even want to do his main job right now…..
He said this yesterday
“Too many things that we need to fix before to talk about tactics or to talk football.”
Keep digging that hole, Mauricio.
Photo by Chelsea FC via Getty Images
I’m not expecting anything from this game other than defeat. Of course we CAN win this game, we know we can. We should have won the first game against them, and we were the better side.
Everything is gloomy right now but we have to remember that we have still had some pretty decent performances at times this season, so we are absolutely capable of winning this.
I just don’t think we will, so forgive me that my optimism stays at rock bottom again.
I think I’ve lost the majority of the faith I did still have in Pochettino. But he has a chance to do something good tomorrow night and show a bit of bravery, a bit of tactical knowledge, and show us that he isn’t afraid to drop his favourites and be so stubborn all the time.
Lets see if he does.
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