What is Chelsea’s style of play? For over 2 years under Mouninho, the answer was very simple. Chelsea was a very slow and methodical team that had deliberate build ups to score while being very defensively sound at the back. José ushered in the greatest era at Chelsea FC under this philosophy, but also managed to bring a lot of criticism over his style (amongst other things). Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t care what people think or say if we are winning. If you want to see how English teams playing "beautiful" soccer fairs, look back at the final Premier League table for the last 7 years, find Chelsea, then keep moving your eyes down until you see "Arsenal." However, there is some truth that Chelsea has become stagnant while other teams keep progressing. Lower reputation teams are figuring out how to match up against Chelsea and teams like Manchester United and Manchester City are evolving into new powerhouses. Are things about to change for the Blues?

Clearly our style has changed some since The Special One’s departure, but critics have not been too far off. Chelsea has always played "defensive possession" more than anything else, with the majority of the team’s possession being behind midfield. This obviously fits with the Mourinho style of play, and Lampard, Ivanovic, Terry, Mikel, Ballack, Drogba, and even Malouda were all built for this system. It is no surprise with these players part of the roster (past or present) that each new manager has failed to change Chelsea’s style. Then Abramovich made a bold move naming the youthful Andre Villas-Boas manager of an aging squad. The appointment of AVB was a big step into removing that label and marking Chelsea as an attacking force. Villas-Boas has showed us two things so far in his short tenure: 1) He understands the importance of youth (Lukaku, Mata, Romeu, Courtois) and 2) He knows how to both adapt and submit his style upon the team at the same time. Some managers in the past seem to have come in, go "Oh, my players know how to play style A, so let’s just stick with that." AVB looked at a team of veterans and said "I can teach these veterans a new brand of soccer." A lot has been said about AVB’s style of play and each time the word "attacking" makes its way into the discussion. I don’t think many people would have an argument against that given Porto’s statistics last season: 73 goals in 30 league games, 44 goals in 17 Europa League games, and only failed to find the net ONCE. Porto had the possession, flair, and goals to boast their attacking mentality. The question was: would AVB’s attacking style at Porto would translate over to the Blues?

For the first few games of the very young season, the answer was no. Chelsea boasted a much improved possession of 64.45% for the first four games (compared to 58.7% last year), but Chelsea still looked slow and predictable. However, with the arrival of Mata and Meireles (along with Sturridge off suspension), the Blues have taken on new form. The credit doesn’t only go to those two/three players, but clearly AVB felt that with them in the side Chelsea could play the style he wanted. Torres coming into form and Anelka suddenly finding his touch seemed to happen right about the time Chelsea began playing their new style. You can tell the players are becoming more comfortable passing it around and our attacking runs have drastically improved. At Manchester United and this last week against Swansea, the Blues appear to be coming into their own. AVB’s "attacking possession" and pressing style is finally coming into focus and it is evident on many levels. In the EPL this year, our goals per game is up to 2.0 from 1.81 last year, attempted passes in the attacking third is up to 193.5/game from 184.38, and the percentage of completed passes in the attacking third is up to 77.0% from 72.75%. Not to mention that teamwork seems to be at an all-time high. Of the 14 goals this year (all competitions), Chelsea has 11 assists credited to their name making for a 78.5% assist-goal percentage (capped off by the beautiful 4 assists for 4 goals against Swansea). Last year Chelsea hit in 97 goals with 65 assists giving a 67.0% assist-goal percentage. Players are creating for each other and the result is more goals, more movement, and more possession.

To visually demonstrate the defensive vs attacking possession I’m talking about, I called in the StatZone app for some help. Below is a comparison of Chelsea’s 4-0 win against Bolton in January last year, and Saturday’s win against Swansea:

via www.americanchelseafans.com

As the picture clearly states, last year’s Bolton game is on the left and the Swansea game is on the right. In both games Chelsea netted 4 goals and remarkably the number of passes is within 2 (500 against Bolton, 502 against Swansea). I’m sure some people will want to point out that we won both games with 4 goals so why does it matter where possession is, but this is about the direction AVB is taking Chelsea, not necessarily results. Besides the fact that AVB’s Blues managed to complete almost 50 more passes than last year’s version, look at where the passes are. Clearly there is an overwhelming majority of passes in Swansea’s half compared to the Bolton game where the majority of passes took place in our own half (see red boxes). To give some statistics on this, against Bolton Chelsea had 137 attempted passes in the attacking third (83 completed) compared to 177 attempts against Swansea (131 completed). Now take into consideration that Chelsea was down 1 man for an entire half against Swansea and realize the stats could be even more lopsided! Having possession in your opponents half forces them to work harder on defense, as well as hinders build-ups against Chelsea. With so many players in Swansea’s half, when Chelsea did lose the ball they could press Swansea and force a clear or win the ball back.

Having Meireles play a center midfield role instead of the holding midfield role was crucial to the possession Chelsea had. As stated earlier, not only is Meireles a average tackler at best, he also likes to get forward. Not restricting his movement to right in front of our defense allows him to play to his strengths and get into dangerous positions. Chelsea’s lack of center midfield creativity is widely documented, but I think Meireles can be a solution. He isn’t going to take players one-on-one and go to goal, but he takes up positions in the center of the midfield that allow the Blues to maintain their attacking presence all over the field. In addition to formerly playing "defensive possession", Chelsea has had to strongly rely on our wings for attack due to the lack of presence in the midfield. Getting a playmaker in the middle would alleviate some of the burden on the wings and let the ball move all over the pitch. Below is an image of Chelsea’s passing from the Norwich game (left) and Meireles passing in this weekend’s game (right).

via www.americanchelseafans.com

You can see against Norwich we had a distinct lack of passing through the middle of the field (red box). We played a 4-2-3-1 with Malouda as the attacking midfielder in this game which in theory would have provided more passes through the middle of the attacking third than playing a standard 4-3-3 would. However, if you compare the passing diagram of Norwich on the left with the first passing diagram of Swansea (above), you see that wasn’t the case. Now take a look at Meireles’s passes against Swansea (right red box). You can tell that he likes to move forward and spray passes from the middle of the attacking third. As much as I love Lampard (an all-time Chelsea legend and I have his jersey), he is being phased out of the team and I think he knows it. He likes to play safer passes in the middle third of the field and then arrive late to score. AVB wants to maintain possession in the attacking third and Lampard is simply not built for that. While Meireles completion rate wasn’t magnificent Saturday (81%), he makes things happen more than Lampard does. Chelsea needs this to stay unpredictable (another term Chelsea fans are used to). Without the middle connection, Chelsea gets trapped down the wings like against Norwich. Players then have to rely on back passes and beating players 1-v-1 to make attacks. Lampard controls the game well from deep, but isn’t a huge attacking threat anymore, especially with his stamina and shot starting to fail him. Ramires has taken up the mantle of late surging runs into the box as evidenced by his 2 goals Saturday. Lampard’s footwork, top-end speed, and agility are all slowing down and it does not look like he can perform the role AVB needs out of a CM.

Now we look at the play of Mikel against Norwich (left), compared to Mikel against Swansea (right):

via www.americanchelseafans.com

You can see that Mikel played a much more advanced position in the Swansea game than earlier in the season. Once again, remember that the entire second half we were down a man and he dropped considerably deeper. Mikel attempted 16 passes in the attacking third in the first half and 3 in the second. Mikel attempted 12 passes in the attacking third for the entire Norwich game. He was on pace to essentially triple the amount of passes in the attacking third until the Torres red card. He may not be able to do this against Man U or Man City, but I love that he is getting forward and actually being involved in the attack. I believe there is more to Mikel than we have seen in…his entire Chelsea career and we may be on the verge of seeing it. Just talk to any Nigerian fan and they will let you know that Mikel is capable of much more than backwards and square passes in front of the defense. I’m anxious to see Mikel break loose from his rigid play and knock the ball with some more flair. You know, as long as he keeps dominating on on the defensive end as well.

AVB is ushering in a new era of soccer at Chelsea and I have complete faith that he will succeed. Just seeing the difference in our Blues play from the first 3 games to the last 3 has been astounding and very encouraging. Villas-Boas talks about getting the most out of his players and team and I believe he is doing exactly that. He tried Meireles as a holding mid and now as a advanced midfielder and I am hoping he noticed the difference in Chelsea’s attacking play with Meireles advanced rather than holding. He has experimented with Anelka on the left of an attacking line of 3 or 4 and saw a different player emerge. He seems to have the guts to stick players like Drogba and Lampard on the bench if they cannot adapt to his new style, but at the same time understand they still have a vital role at the club. His changing tactics/formations (and quirky movements) throughout the game are almost as fun to watch as the players themselves and you can tell that he is constantly analyzing each detail in his head. As a result, we have seen Chelsea improve each and every game they have played this year and the players seem to be gaining more confidence in AVB, the system, and each other. I think Abramovich will realize at the end of the year that he has finally found the manager to bring Chelsea to the forefront of soccer…with style.

Let me know your thoughts (agree or disagree) in the comments! For more opinions, pre-match, and post-match analysis, check out www.AmericanChelseaFans.com.

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