The Times - UK (2022-01-01)

Lukaku: I’m

unhappy but

won’t give up

CONTINUED FROM FRONT

into chats and think, ‘Did he mean it the

other way?’ We have zero problem and,

OK, he gave an interview so maybe he

has a problem, so he needs to speak up.

I don’t have one.”

Lukaku is understood to have no

intention of leaving Chelsea but said

that he would have remained at Inter in

the summer had his request for a new

contract been granted. He also revealed

that Manchester City attempted to sign

him in 2020 with a higher offer than

Chelsea made last year.

The interview, recorded at Lukaku’s

London home and arranged without

Chelsea or Tuchel’s knowledge, was

broadcast in Italy yesterday after high-

Tuchel celebrates one year

at Chelsea this month

to note that, by some spooky coinci-

dence, Manchester City’s points per

game (2.05) and goal difference (+41) a

year into the Guardiola project were

exactly the same as Chelsea’s numbers

under Tuchel. That is a glowing —

and very auspicious — endorse-

ment of his work so far.

Tuchel is one of those

managers who under-

stands this complex

game on a deep spatial

level, who has a sense of

a football team as a

perfectible thing. He

has shown the ability to

elevate a team beyond

the sum of their talents

by leveraging patterns,

rotations, the practised

tessellation of shapes.

One of the really

interesting things about

Tuchel’s Chelsea, I think –

and a reminder that there

is more than one way to

improve a team — is that

their share of shots in the

Premier League (64 per

cent) is not dissimilar to

their shot share under

Frank Lampard (63.4 per

cent). In other words, Chel-

sea’s matches under Tuchel

look, in terms of their end-

Tuchel is bigger asset to

2 1GS Saturday January 1 2022 | the times

WEEKEND

BRIEFING

Ones to watch

Arsenal will face

Manchester City

without their manager, Mikel

Arteta, who has Covid, but

have won their past five in all

competitions. City sit eight

points clear at top of table.

12.30pm BT Sport 1, talkSPORT

Second-placed Chelsea

meet third-placed

Liverpool at Stamford Bridge.

Both teams will look to make

amends, having dropped

points and fallen behind in

the title race in midweek.

Tomorrow 4.30pm, Sky Sports

Guess the star

This former world No 1 golfer

has been on seven Ryder

Cup-winning teams. He has

never won a major but has

come second twice at the

Masters: once at the Open

and at The Players last year.

Answer on page 14 (in quiz)

New year’s racing

The pick of the New Year’s

Day racing is at Cheltenham,

with the highlight the Relkeel

Hurdle, in which the favourite

is Brewin’upastorm. Coverage

also includes racing at

Musselburgh.

12.55pm, ITV; pages 22-23

Guess the season

West Ham lose European Cup

Winners’ Cup final against

Anderlecht; Southampton

beat Manchester United in

the FA Cup final; England

out of Euros after finishing

second in qualifying group

Answer on page 11

On the box

TODAY

2pm Sale Sharks v Wasps,

Gallagher Premiership

BT Sport 2

5.30pm Crystal Palace v

West Ham, Premier League

Sky Sports, talkSPORT

TOMORROW

2pm Brentford v Aston Villa,

Premier League

Sky Sports Main Event

3pm Gloucester v

Harlequins, Gallagher

Premiership

BT Sport 2

7.30pm World Darts

Championship semi-finals

Sky Sports, talkSPORT

How Lukaku’s role

compares to Inter

last season

In his interview, Lukaku spoke of being

unhappy with his role at Chelsea. He did

not specify why, but at Inter last season

he generally played as one of two

strikers, usually with Lautaro Martinez,

whereas Chelsea have only played two

up front in three of 18 league games

FORMATIONS USED

3-4-2-1

3-5-2

3-4-1-2

3-4-3

Inter 2020-21 (38 league games)

3-5-2

3-4-1-2

3-1-4-2

3-4-2-1

Chelsea 2021-22 (18 league games)

31 times

5

1

1

1

1

16 times

2

MORE GOALS - AND MORE

INVOLVEMENT

Not only was Lukaku scoring more

often for Inter last season, he was more

involved in matches in general, having

more touches, more passes, and more

shots per game.

Inter 2020-21

Minutes per goal

Minutes per assist

Touches per match

Touches in opposition box per match

Passes per match

Shots per match

Chelsea 2021-22

120

166

262

No assists to date

32.8

7. 3
   6.4

18.7

2.4

39.8

22.9

3

James

Gheerbrant

For a while there, things felt almost

idyllic at Chelsea. 2021 has been a very

good year. A second Champions

League title. A happy camp. The players

and manager celebrating with their

families on the confetti-strewn pitch of

the Estádio do Dragão. The imperious

4-0 demolition of Juventus last month,

with the first three goals scored by

graduates of the Chelsea academy.

The tenure of Thomas Tuchel, which

is nearing its one-year anniversary on

January 26, has supplied not only

the kind of high-wire success from

which Chelsea have hardly been

estranged in the Roman Abramovich

era, but also some unusually soulful

and stirring moments.

But even when you’re feeling warm,

the temperature can drop away. And in

recent days it has been possible to

detect that shift in the weather, the

sudden chill in the atmosphere, the

sight, somewhere on the horizon, of

that familiar grey fin slicing through

tranquil blue water. Results have hit a

skid. Isolated grumbles about Chelsea’s

playing style have begun to harden into

a consensus. Most ominous has been

the recurrence of those old tensions

between the squad and their coach, in

Romelu Lukaku’s comments about

being unhappy with his role and

Tuchel’s counter-thrust, lamenting

“noise we don’t need”.

You know the history. You know how

this one ends. Tuchel is an intense and

demanding coach with a habit of rub-

bing people up the wrong way. Chelsea

are a club where the talent runs the

show. Since the first firing of José Mour-

inho in 2007, they have turned manage-

rial slash-and-burn into a model, razing

the head office at regular intervals to

reinvigorate the team. It is a strategy

that has proved hugely successful over

a decade and a half of glittering con-

quest, and dissolved a lot of football’s

encrusted notions about the innate

righteousness of loyalty and stability.

If any club have earned the right to

feel blasé about the prospect of letting a

brilliant coach walk out the door, to be

confident in their ability to withstand

that loss, it is Chelsea. But if there

is a crunch approaching, if it

does come down to a choice

between the manager and

certain players, I think it is time

for Chelsea to break the habit

and go all-in on Tuchel.

There are a few things to

say about Tuchel. The

first and most obvious is

that he is a brilliant

manager. Since he took

over Chelsea have

taken 2.05 points a

game in the Pre-

mier League. In 52

matches in the

Premier League

and Champions

League, they

have conceded 33

goals. That is a stag-

geringly good record,

and a testament to the

influence that meticulous

coaching can have.

Of all the managers,

Tuchel is probably

closest to Pep Guardiola

in his focus on highly

rehearsed positional

play, and it is interesting

to-end balance, pretty much like their

games under his predecessor. It is in the

inner workings that the watchmaker

has wrought his transformation —

which suggests also that a further leap

is possible if Tuchel can get Chelsea to

dominate games like City do.

The second thing to say is that

brilliant managers are very rare.

Academic studies in this area suggest

that most teams simply find a level

commensurate with the quality of their

players; very few coaches offer the

guarantee of a substantive positive

influence through training and tactics.

Tuchel is undoubtedly one.

We can get a read on this by looking

at the Elo ratings (an empirical system

borrowed from chess) of his clubs. By

this measure, he left Mainz 108 points

better off than the team he inherited,

Borussia Dortmund 71 points better off

and Paris Saint-Germain 23 points up;

his positive effect at Chelsea at present

stands at +87. Just as salient is what has

happened to those clubs since he left:

Mainz have managed only one top-ten

finish in the Bundesliga, Dortmund

have stood still despite assembling a

better squad and, almost a year into

Mauricio Pochettino’s reign, PSG look

a far inferior version of the organised

collective which Tuchel took to the

Champions League final.

Tuchel is by far the most irreplacea-

ble asset that Chelsea have. Elite coach-

es are a much scarcer commodity than

elite players. If he were to leave at the

end of this season, where would that

leave Chelsea, manager-wise? Of the

coaches on Tuchel’s level, Guardiola

and Jürgen Klopp are out of the picture,

Antonio Conte has already managed

Chelsea, Julian Nagelsmann is en-

sconced at Bayern Munich and Atletico

Madrid’s Diego Simeone is not exactly

at the peak of his powers. They would

be fishing in a very small pond indeed.

One of the biggest lessons of the past

couple of seasons is that having one of

the absolute top-rank managers is

perhaps the most advantageous market

move you can make. The effect is two-

fold: not only does your team get the

benefit of elite coaching, but you also

reduce the available pool of elite coach-

es for the other superclubs. Look at the

parlous situation that Manchester

United now find themselves in, desper-

ate for that injection of genius, but with

almost nowhere to get it from.

If Chelsea are looking enviously at

City and Liverpool and the higher gears

they possess, then that is an argument

for sticking with Tuchel, not discarding

him. The performance of those teams

this season has been an advert for what

you may call the single-malt approach

to managers: simply leaving well alone,

allowing that coach-squad relationship

to mature, intensify, take on new

depths. Chelsea have inarguably been

successful over the past ten years, but

have they had what City and Liverpool

have now, in their sixth and seventh

seasons respectively under Guardiola

and Klopp: that sense of a manager

completely in tune with their squad,

discovering new ways to get the most

out of their players, eliciting maximal

response from the system with the

merest push on the tiller.

There is a wider context here too.

Guardiola’s contract expires in 2023,

Klopp’s in 2024. They are nearer the

end of their tenures than the beginning,

and they will leave a vacuum. It will not

always be this hard to win the Premier

League title.

Chelsea have a shot at being what

City are now in five years’ time, and

even if they have to depart from a

philosophy which has served them

well, it seems like a shot worth taking.

Lukaku told

Italian TV he

has problems

with Chelsea’s

system of play