Flashback to the 1st of December 2013, we had just lost to Man City at the Etihad and were 11th place.....8 points off relegation, 9 points off Champions League.
Chelsea expose Swansea's defensive midfielder deficiency ESPN FC's Alejandro Moreno examines Chelsea's great start to the season and their 4-2 win versus Swansea where Diego Costa notched a hat-trick. For twenty minutes on Saturday, Garry Monk almost had everyone convinced that he truly is a football genius. It looked for all the world like he was about to top his manager of the month award by knocking off Jose Mourinho's unbeaten Chelsea side at Stamford Bridge. The game plan was exactly right -- relentless organised pressure to steal the ball, keep the ball and score the opening goal. Chelsea couldn't get a foothold, unused to being assaulted with quite so much intensity. The intensity couldn't last. No team can press for 90 minutes. Swansea perhaps could have chosen to pressurise Chelsea in waves, resting for spells of ten or fifteen minutes in between, but bewilderingly decided to give up on pressurising altogether and instead became comparatively passive for the remainder of the game -- during which time Chelsea found space to score four goals. Worse still, Swansea tried to park the bus for the final five minutes of the first half, wanting to get to the interval with their lead intact, which is almost always a terrible idea. Football is a game at least half decided by chance (read The Numbers Game if you don't believe it), and when a side allows all the football to be played in their third, chances are all those loose balls and unplanned bounces are eventually going to end up in the net. A few minutes of tactical traditionalism (I'd call it cowardice) allowed Chelsea the equaliser and effectively wrote-off the Swans excellent early effort. Mourinho's tactical tweak at the break was altogether more sophisticated. One change -- Ramires to replace the ineffective Andre Schurrle -- allowed Cesc Fabregas to move into the hole and get to work on Swansea's soft belly. Fabregas is a surgical assister, and Mourinho had correctly identified that neither Ki Sung-Yueng or Jonjo Shelvey were going to be able to shut him down. Ki and Shelvey were more or less playing the same role, as they have been all season; taking it in turns to push forward or sit back. Things started well for Swansea against Chelsea, with John Terry scoring an own goal for the home team 11 minutes in. The fact neither is particularly good at the unfashionable black arts of defending has been a weakness that was always going to be exploited by the first quality side Swansea faced this season. Four goals against should surprise nobody. If it wasn't Shelvey fouling or being beaten for pace, it was Ki being dribbled past like a human turnstile. Fabregas was allowed to dribble into the Swans box and set-up Costa's second without a challenge. As Chelsea's hole player, it becomes almost exclusively the job of the Swans defensive midfielder to mark him. Only Swansea don't actually have one, and there's the problem. Chelsea's own defensive midfielder Nemanja Matic kept Swansea's hole player, Gylfi Sigurdsson, quieter than he's been all season. In that respect, the game was a perfect demonstration of contrast -- Swansea's secret weakness mirrored as Chelsea's hidden strength. It's an obvious lesson, and one that Monk's August bid for Benjamin Stambouli proves he knows well enough already, which poses the question -- why not sign a destroyer when you had the chance? Despite struggling defensively, Shelvey did actually score a goal (again the result of his 90-minute effort -- how many players in a 4-1 drubbing would still be looking to make that run?), and Ki's great dribble set-up the Swans first. It's not as though these players do not have quality, but it's clear most of that quality is offensive, and it's safe to say two offensive midfielders still can't do the job of a single defensive one. Monk's own half-time substitution -- Federico Fernandez on for Jordi Amat -- only had to be made because Amat had been booked. Amat is one of the better candidates to cover the defensive midfielder role now Fernandez looks set to take his spot in defence, but on Saturday the Spaniard only showed how he still lacks the judgement and control to play the part. It's something I've commented on extensively already, but surely there can be no doubt now that Swansea are deficient in a vital area. It's a problem that can be glossed over against weaker sides without the talent to exploit it, or hidden briefly from better sides, but come January, Monk must sign Stambouli plan B, whoever that might be.
Not far off a description of the WBA, Burnley, Man U (45 minutes) and Villarreal games (70 minutes). And that is the problem .. our midfield becomes totally ineffective for long period, particularly in the second half, and we are not learning how to change it. If this continues canny managers will take advantage.
