Tactical Nous

Crystal Palace 1-2 Chelsea FC. Not exactly a comfortable scoreline against a team that will definitely be mixing it in to avoid the drop. Manchester City's one-man show against our neighbours Tottenham with 4 - goal hero Sergio Aguero also joining our own Costa as the joint top scorers actually puts our performance at the Selhurst Park in the background. But contrary to all that, this was one of the most comfortable performance from a Chelsea side in a long while. One of the games where the team was able to dominate from the start to the finish. Albeit the game being marred by a red card to a red hot Cesar Azpilicueta for a red hot challenge and Palace balancing the books with a red card of their own to Delaney, the blues looked in full control gor the entirety of the game.

Jose Mourinho has already stated in an interview with Gary Neville for The Telegraph that he does not have a fixed playing philosophy and on sunday it came to the fore. Such is his influence on the blues current game that Cesc Fabregas was being man-marked seriously by James McArthur and with Mile Jedinak trying to boss the middle something had to be done. And so Fab was tasked to move his lapdog to the sides to create space for Oscar and it worked out to be a tactical stroke with the blues enjoying 72% of possession (our highest this season and the fifth highest in the league).

With questions being raised on whether Chelsea could still win without Costa there was no better way to answer them than with 2 goals that had individual brilliance and team play written all over it. That first goal was a fantastic free kick from the ever blossoming Oscar and the technique was quite difficult to execute in that he had to get the ball over the wall to the last pole and still get enough power on it to keep it out of the Keeper's reach. We've seen him done it couple of times and we'll love to see it any day of the week, thank you.
The second goal is best summarised by Mourinho. He called it a Scandal.

17 passes involved

8 players had touches of the ball (Only Gary Cahill and Thibaut Courtois did not touch with Azpilicueta sent off)

9 total touches by Fabregas ( including the final one)
These are the type of intricate play that the team lacked last season.  Fabregas seems to be the key to opening up defences who have their back to the wall.

John Terry
Captain Leader Legend
500 caps as captain
13 trophies as captain

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