With Willian on the flank, Eden Hazard as the centre forward, and Pedro on the right side, Chelsea positioned their attackers so that Newcastle’s backline were unable to take up their normal low block preference.

They took positions just outside the Newcastle final third, which allowed them space to break into whenever long balls or throughballs were played in. This meant that even though Chelsea dominated possession, the space between their backline and their attackers was atypically short.

Combine that with Hazard’s movement & positioning, and Chelsea found a few opportunities to slip by Newcastle’s backline.

The Blues demonstrated 2 attacking threat types against Newcastle. The first saw Luiz operate as the long ball specialist, playing passes that weren’t too dissimilar to what Newcastle fans are accustomed to seeing from Jonjo Shelvey. The other threat was the interplay on the edge of the box between the front 3 and supporting full backs.

For the first one, Newcastle came up short. Luiz was able to pull off this move several types in the game. The first preventive action would have been to press Luiz through one of Rondon, Atsu or Perez, allowing the other 2 time to help Hayden and Longstaff in midfield. Sadly, this was never attempted.

The other would have been to ensure the backline was organised and able to catch the Chelsea runner offside. Unfortunately, it took until the 75th minute for an attacker to be offside from a Luiz long ball.