Reframing The Debate: Defence Vs. Attack At Wigan Athletic

But it becomes really hard to argue taking the player off in the best form of his life, and probably also best form in the squad over the past few weeks (sturridge) and leaving on another who’s work rate devolved to next to nothing as the game went on (drogba). I’m not going to do the Torres/Drogba argument because Torres’s work rate isn’t always there either. I know the whole defensive header argument but I think it was more important to have some semblance of pressure and the threat of a counter attack to prevent possession in our third.

The other difficult point is in arguing that Fernando Torres (or an attacking minded player) wouldn’t provide any defensive value. Ignoring the idiotic red early in the season there has to be some value placed on a forward pressing high/winning back possession/keeping possession/ occupying defenders.

I guess my point is just that it’s not an exact science, I didn’t have a problem with the tactics I just think that based on current form Sturridge probably should have stayed on. I would have liked to see Romeu remain on too but I understand that one. It’s somewhat disappointing that we didn’t have the confidence that we would break them down without that. (be mindful that if Ramires was healthy/playing there’s a good chance that wouldn’t have to be made since we probably would have gotten more out of the midfield)

PS. Did the lampard, meireles midfield remind anyone else of a poor man’s lampard/gerrard midfield that has always worked so well? I love lamps but he doesn’t do well playing with such a similar player.

I am part of the Torres-needs-to-play-more crowd… but not just for the heck of it. I like to apply a little reason to my wish to see him play (other than wanting some eye candy on my television)… and in this game, I am not sure he’d have been a suitable substitution.

The strange part to me was more that, against Wigan (not to diminish them), we opted to defend the one goal lead, instead of continuing to have at it. I am not convinced that Wigan would have been able to maintain their same tactics after the goal, and they did start to push forward more, which I was hoping we’d take advantage of in the attack. It isn’t a flawed set of tactics, but a puzzling one, being that it isn’t really what AVB has touted as the kind of football he wants to play.

I do, however, appreciate his bending to the situation sometimes… just wish we did this against the Valencias of the world, and decided to go out and clobber the Wigans. We probably should have had a 1 goal lead in the first ten minutes, but given the players didn’t really execute, I suppose we did what we could.

There are times when certain statistics don’t tell the whole story, and I think this is one of those times. Preventing a goal was clearly the optimal outcome, and in that sense I understand what AVB was thinking with the substitutions. But, Chelsea has given up an average of 1.2 goals in EPL matches. And, we have seen late goals conceded much too frequently (Valencia away, Liverpool, Genk away, Bayer away), often from glaring individual errors. I think those two facts are enough to allow a reasonable person to question AVB’s decision to bring off Mata and Sturridge.

Obviously, a reasonable person could also conclude that Chelsea’s poor late game defense this season was further reason for AVB to make defensive changes late in the game. But I don’t see how some people calling for Torres to be brought on late takes away from the validity of other people questioning the decision to bring off both Mata and Danny.

with 2 of the substitutions was who was taken off. The Kalou for Romeu sub made a great deal of sense. We did need Mikel to come in after we took the 1-0 lead because our defensive frailties in midfield were apparent. However, Meireles, Drogba and Lamps were pants, and I thought one of them should’ve come off for Mikel, but I did see the wisdom in what AVB was trying to do. Taking Sturridge off was the substitution that with which I really didn’t agree. Malouda offers us very little even in a defensive sense. This also left us without any real attacking threat with Mata gone as well, should Wigan equalize. Wigan was looking increasingly threatening after they decided to take the bus on the road and out of the car park. We ended up putting all our eggs in one basket.

Alas, I can see both sides of the coin in the aforementioned situations. I think it’s absurd that some Chelsea supporters are attacking AVB with such venom. He was tactically conservative. My druthers would have been not to sacrifice both of our best attacking players and kept at least one on, but then again I don’t have a Russian oligarch offering 13m quid to my current employer to release me and come to manage one of the top teams in club football.

That the most obvious defensive change, that being to introduce Ferreira (or a traffic cone, or anything) for Bosingwa was not made. Bosingwa was fully responsible for the Wigan goal. He was caught upfield before the pass out to the wing, was still trying to recover when his man received the ball, then got turned around and bypasses as if he wasn’t there. He’s a gross liability and has no business being anywhere near this team. We need to play Paulo for now and buy a capable RB in January if we don’t want to ship goals like this.

It’s interesting, Bosingwa seems to get a lot more love here than on some of the other sites I read. Elsewhere on the internet there’s near unanimous agreement that he’s having an awful season and has been responsible for a good number of the goals we’ve conceded.

With regard to being further up the pitch on the Wigan goal, I’m convinced that it’s the responsibility of the RB to mark his winger when you’ve got a one goal lead in the 88th minute, and that failure to do that is pretty unforgivable. We didn’t need Bosingwa to be attacking or pressing high in that instance. All he had to do was mark his man. If he had Chelsea would have had the three points.

the same time denying you the ability to counter effectively. This would be no problem if our team wasn’t prone to conceding late, but that’s not the case.

I can see why AVB would did what he did, he doesn’t know the future, but it was tempting fate a little bit.

That said, I didn’t fully understand your science there.

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