The Sunday Times December 19, 2021 11illustrated in how Tuchel started the
campaign with Marcos Alonso at left
wing back given how supreme the
Spaniard had been in pre-season
training compared with a dispirited
Ben Chilwell, who had not played a
single minute for England during the
European Championships.
Gradually, Chilwell found form, was
eased into the side, until the former
Leicester City defender found his
groove and displaced Alonso
completely.
Then Chilwell damaged his knee
against Juventus last month. For any
other team to lose a player in such
excellent form would have been
deeply upsetting, but Tuchel hadthe pedigree, the sense of innate
superiority?
They then lost 3-2 to West Ham
United before a sloppy display
against Zenit St Petersburg in their
final group game in the Champions
League, and needed a late penalty to
defeat a Leeds United team who were
dismantled a few days later by
Manchester City.
At the start of this season what
appeared likely to swing the title in
Chelsea’s favour was the depth in
quality of their squad. Even when
depleted, either by injury or positive
tests for Covid, the starting line-up is
salivatingly good. The possibilities for
intelligent rotation was bestChelsea badly miss
Kovacic, who is one
half of the “double
six” partnership with
Kanté that has helped
to make Chelsea such
a force under Tuchelalready tested out Alonso and so the
transition was seamless.
It is a similar picture at centre half.
Thiago Silva glides in and out of the
team in a near preternatural fashion,
and Trevoh Chalobah gives a darned
good impression of a defender in his
third season as a Premier League
regular rather than a youngster
thrown in at the deep end. No other
team are as adept at the wing-back
system as Chelsea, and it has been
thrilling to watch Reece James
advance with increasing menace up
the right flank.
It is more complicated in attack,
where Tuchel has plenty of
frustrating choices. Romelu LukakuThomas Tuchel is not the sort to
shrug and hope for the best. The
touchline demeanour of the Chelsea
manager is one of an acute
perfectionist. Indeed, the juncture at
which mere mortals might sigh in
appreciation of some neat close
control or a defence-splitting pass is
often what provokes his gyrating
exasperated breakdancing on the
touchline. What we see as pretty, he
sees as flawed. What we view as
majestic serves only to make the
German splutter with indignation. It
can always be better, it can always be
improved, it can always be far more
akin to what he asked from his
players in training.
During a dominant first half
against Everton on Thursday, Tuchel
was at it again, gesticulating in
frustration not at the plethora of
missed chances but the minutiae, the
small decisions that, in his eyes,
make the big difference. This is not a
coach who gets lucky. The former
Paris Saint-Germain manager is
arguably a control freak. And so, you
could sympathise as he tried to work
out how on earth his side managed to
only draw against an Everton team
who were heavily depleted by injury
and, initially, scared of their own
shadows let alone the imposing
calibre of the opposition.
“It’s a freak result for this kind of
match,” Tuchel said. “So where to
point the finger and where to start?”
The starting point needs to be that
this was not such a freak result after
all. Chelsea have been stuttering of
late. They were largely unimpressive
in narrowly defeating Watford. What
troubled Chelsea fans about the
display at Vicarage Road was that it
made Claudio Ranieri’s struggling
side look accomplished. Where was
Everton
realised
without
a fully
functioning
‘double six’
they were
not so scary
and it was
worth
having a go
started with panache but injury and
sluggishness have blunted his
effectiveness, and all of Hakim
Ziyech, Timo Werner, Kai Havertz,
Callum Hudson-Odoi and Christian
Pulisic struggle to find a finish. Only
Mason Mount is anything close to
reliable, but they had been finding
just enough goals between them to
supplement those provided by the
defenders.
The punchline in all this is the
midfield. If Tuchel has a weakness it
is his commitment to what he calls
the “double six”. When his two
central midfielders dovetail, the
whole system lights up and the
opposition flounder, cowed by its
imperiousness. Football’s equivalent
of Ant and Dec is, though, a delicate
balancing act that was thrown into
disarray by the hamstring injury
suffered by Mateo Kovacic at the end
of October and the fact N’Golo Kanté
has been able to feature only 12 times
this season. Jorginho is a vital
contributor, not least for his penalty
kicks, but excels only when alongside
the right colleague. It is refreshing to
see Ruben Loftus-Cheek being given a
run in the team given his long fight
against injuries but the English
midfielder does not possess the
understated, relentless panache of
Kovacic nor the work rate and
intuition of Kanté.
A depleted, young Everton team
slowly recognised that without a fully
functioning “double six” Chelsea
were not so scary and it was worth
having a go at challenging in the
centre of the pitch. Kovacic and
Kanté should be back soon but in the
meantime, Tuchel might want to
point the finger at his own
predilection to stick with a system
regardless of the personnel available.Stubborn Tuchel must accept that without Kanté
and Kovacic his stuttering side need a new system
Alyson Rudd
JAMES WILLIAMSON