Raise your hand if you were satisfied with Chelsea's performance on Saturday. Nobody? Right. It's late and I'm tired, so this will have to suffice as an introductory paragraph. Formation chart after the jump, made up in Paint in lieu of having statistics.

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I've always had issues with the idea that we need to re-build the Chelsea squad to suit Fernando Torres. If we're going to pay 50 million pounds for a center forward, I'd certainly hope we don't need to tailor the squad to his needs to get anything out of him. While he's certainly going to require a few tweaks to the service provided from what we'd give Drogba, he should still be capable of getting into spaces in which our players can find him. He isn't, and unfortunately that's making us very easy to defend.

After the jump we'll take a look at quite a few instances from today's game where Torres killed off the attack himself with his poor runs and terrible positioning. I've taken some screen caps from the game and highlighted what he should be doing differently, and frankly I was shocked at the amount of material I had from 45 minutes. I literally left about 35 screen caps out just due to the sheer volume of examples available. Beyond being the main culprit for our goal conceded today Torres was completely useless on the offensive end. To say he was atrocious today would be an understatement.

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The defensive performance on the whole today was pretty good. Birmingham played very defensively, but they really created nothing from open play. Our set piece defending continued to look abysmal though, which has been the case throughout large potions of this season. With that in mind, I thought it would be wise to break down the goal and see if we can figure out what exactly went wrong. Take a look at how we set our defense to defend the corner...

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It's been a while since I've done one of these, and I'm out of practice. As a result this isn't quite as polished or as in depth as I'd like considering the time it's taken to put it together. Regardless, I've been studying Swansea City vs. Chelsea, and have a few general points I'd like to make (along with some nifty graphs). Formation chart after the jump...

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Chelsea continued their habit of going behind against the top teams in England, and yet again managed to come away with at least a point. An open London derby to continue another trend in the Premier League of entertaining big matches; the scoreline may say differently but there could have been many goals in this one.

I am going to blatantly copy Graham's methods here; formation chart after the jump.

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Jordi Gomez equalised late on for Wigan in a generally dismal match. Roberto Martinez went with a back five, with Connor Sammon being played ahead of Victor Moses up front. Andre Villas-Boas made one enforced change from the side that ended City's unbeaten run on Monday, Frank Lampard returning to the side in place of the injured Ramires.

Wigan were much better defensively than they had been all season. This came from an unusually fluid but fundamentally defensive formation that saw them sit deep in their own half for most of the game, and Chelsea's midfield and attack struggled to pass through this ten man barrier.

Wigan's defensive shape was unusually flexible, with David Jones willing to double-mark Daniel Sturridge, Diame would look to press the player in possession regardless of positioning, and Caldwell sweeping in behind his defence to deal with long balls.

The game lacked creativity in the final third. After a run of good form, this was a disappointing performance from Chelsea. Wigan were also dour in possession and it took a defensive error to level the scores.

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We faced elimination from the Champions League at the group stage via a combination of individual and collective errors partially attributable to the implementation of a new philosophy, but it was the old method that took us through. John Terry and Didier Drogba shone as Villas-Boas adapted his tactics for a must-win game, while Frank Lampard was forced to watch from the sidelines.

Valencia went as expected, a broad 4-2-3-1 shape minus the influential Ever Banega.

The key tactical focus of this game is undoubtedly Chelsea's shape and system when without the ball. Unlike other big games against Arsenal, Liverpool and Manchester United, Chelsea sat back without the ball to create a 4-5-1 predominantly most of the time, with little to no emphasis on winning the ball back. There was a big emphasis however on lighting fast counters, which while as a pure system is unseen this season, (bar the second half at St James Park Sports Direct Arena) is still a central part of our system. To clarify, Villas-Boas' main focus is on winning the ball back high up the pitch and then spreading the ball at a high tempo in attack - however he still allows for countering as a secondary measure of attack.

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Chelsea got the better of a high flying Newcastle, but the scoreline betrayed what happened in an enthralling end to end clash.

Andre Villas-Boas selected Didier Drogba to lead the line, and the only other selection of any real surprise was Oriol Romeu in the holding midfield role for the third time in seven days. Newcastle had to make do without Chiek Tiote and Jonas Gutierrez, who were replaced by Danny Guthrie and Peter Lovenkenbrands respectively. Ben Arfa played in the hole.

The momentum of the match swung from side to side, but Chelsea were more complete for more periods of the game, took their chances and defended doggedly. Newcastle, for all their stellar early season form, showed the gulf that exists between pretenders and contenders; those serious about Champions League qualification have the depth in their squad to ably cover missing players. The replacements for Tiote and Gutierrez just didn't met the standards of their predecessors that have helped propel Newcastle to the upper echelons of the Premier League.

It would be remiss to talk about this match and not acknowledge all the non-tactical features that could have changed the game, however they didn't happen, and as such things did happen with the events that did occur.

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