Conte has a system. A beautiful, perfectly tailored system that recently took one of the worst Italian National Teams in recent memory to the Quater Finals of EURO 2016, and that he used to steer Juventus to three consecutive Scuedettos between 2011 and 2014.

Conte’s System

That system is hard to describe in standard formation notation, but it’s somewhere between 3–5–2 and a 5–2–1–2 depending on the opposition and the state of the match. It involves a Goalkeeper (obviously), three central defenders, two wing backs, two central midfielders, an attacking midfielder and two strikers. Conte has also experimented with dropping the attacking midfielder back behind the central midfielders, where a holding midfielder would usually play.

The strikers and attacking midfielder operate in a reasonably orthodox way for their position, where the real magic lies is in how the midfielders, central defenders and wing backs play.

Despite there only being two central midfielders, neither of them plays a holding role, with both being advanced, attacking players. At Juventus, Conte would often use Pogba and Marchisio in these positions, neither of whom offer much on the defensive side of the pitch. This is also when he would deploy the deeper lying midfielder, often having Andrea Pirlo sit behind this midfield duo. However, despite playing in a similar position to a holding midfielder, no one would have described him as once, with his primary duties being to orchestrate the play and play long balls forward. Fundamentally, Conte relieved his midfielders of defensive duties.

Conte does something similar with his wing backs, largely relieving them of defensive duties to allow them to bomb forward in the absence of proper wingers. This role is typified by Alessandro Florenzi’s performance at EURO 2016, with him often being mentioned among the Italian side’s top attacking contributors. This has also meant that the has often deployed pure wingers in the wing back positions, as he did with Stephan El Shaarawy during EURO 2016. Just as he does with his midfielders, Conte largely relieves his wing backs of their defensive duties.

The reason that Conte is able to relieve his wing backs and his central midfielders of their defensive duties, thereby isolating his central defenders, is that his defence is always strong, largely due to his use of a three at the back system.

When Conte took over, he immediately went about implementing his system at his new club. He didn’t however, have enough fit centre backs to play the three at the back formation that fits his system, having not yet purchased David Luiz. This meant playing a formation with only two centre backs while playing a system that relies on a strong central defence that can be isolated in order to allow the wing backs and central midfielders to contribute on the offensive side of the pitch.

That leaves Chelsea thin at the back, and allows the oppositions creative players to have freedom to operate with space in front of the back line. While this can be dealt with when you have three centre backs as they can more easily man mark attacking players, cover more ground to prevent through balls and can afford to have a player abandon the line to attack the ball carrier, it leads to a defence that looks constantly exposed when you only have two central defenders.

This was exemplified in Chelsea’s recent 3–0 thrashing against Arsenal, with the second and third goals being a direct result of the inconsistency between the the system that Conte has implemented and the number of central defenders that he has been able to put out.

Example 1

The Lead up to Arsenal’s Second Goal

The above graphic shows the lead up to Arsenal’s second goal, and exemplifies Chelsea’s problem. Iwobi is able to find space in between Chelsea’s midfield and defence, and due to Chelsea only having two central defenders, they are unable to prevent him from playing the final ball that opens up their defence and one pass later, leads to Walcott’s goal.

Example 2

The Lead up to Arsenal’s Third Goal

This is possibly the clearest example of the problem. Ozil is able to bypass Kante with a brilliant turn and he then has space to play in front of the back two. This due to the midfielders and wing backs being on the edge of the box when he makes the break. Once Ozil and Sanchez are two on two with Chelsea’s centre back partnership, a goal is almost certain, and this shows us that Conte’s system of isolating the central defenders simply doesn’t work without Conte’s 3 at the back formation.

The Solution

Conte simply can’t afford to continue playing a formation that is incompatible with his system and philosophy. He switched to three at the back at the end of the Arsenal match and that looks to be the only way forward for Conte and Chelsea.

While Conte’s regular system does not involve wingers, opting instead for attacking wing backs, he may be forced to adapt his system to a standard 3–5–2 to fit his winger heavy Chelsea squad, with their last two players of the year being wingers in the form of Hazard and Willian. Furthermore, eliminating wing backs would mean increased defensive responsibility for the midfielders which would make use of the squads holding midfielders, Matic and Kante. This would also likely mean Ivanovic being placed into the back three rotation.

If Conte wants to avoid another calamitous defeat, he has to stay true to the system he was hired to implement, it’s that simple.