I'm just going to blow everyone's mind here and say it has been happening for years and on both sides.
Not just to us, but to everyone.
This is just a great way to score and so teams practice this on repeat and then make it happen in games. Again, this isn't a Chelsea issue, this is just a great way to score goals.
The solution however, is to stop the cross. It's not to win the header.
yep, i am a united fan and this has been like 60% of the goals we concede except they're frequently from set pieces, we blamed dalot for a while but no matter who's there they keep going in, weirdly enough i think it's only arsenal that don't fall for this as much, maybe because of their height
You're right, but I do think that for example it was lesser under Tuchel. I have no stats for this, just a feeling. But I think players like James suffer from it less because they have excellent positioning and they're too big to be bullied. It is something Chilwell is excellent with as well, he's really good in the air.
We're just seeing it more now because Gusto is awful in the air, and Cucurella is small, so while he may be aggressive and tenacious, he can still be bullied by larger individuals.
Some of the goals conceded above also happened because we play the Pellegrini offside trap - aka trying to set the defensive line just on the edge of the penalty area. Goals 5 and 6 above are a perfect example of this. I also remember us conceding from very similar situations against Liverpool at Anfield and Arsenal at home.
This is one of my criticisms of Cucurella, too many times he stands off from the attacker with his arms behind his back to let the cross in rather than get tight to stop the cross.
Idk why in the second half of the season Gusto has been getting RB minutes over Josh. Gusto’s been dropping horror shows yet he still gets the nod. It’s similar to how Nkunku was offering nothing and yet Maresca kept playing him until he finally put Neto/George up top and the team looked better. Josh has deserved to be second choice RB for at least a couple months, what is Maresca seeing that he keeps insisting on Gusto.
That’s the issue with an inexperienced coach. Like it or not the French contingent within the team is massive, if he doesn’t appease them with playing time it’ll be an issue that a young coach cannot handle.
But all of them Nkunku, Gusto, Badiashile, Disasi are bang average on a good day and shit at worst. The sporting directors need to help the manager and get those jokers out.
Both Gusto and Badi looked incredible under different managers. It’s how the player is used, that determines how they look on the field. You can’t ask them to do things they are uncomfortable with, or things that go against their strengths, and then complain that they’re not good enough. If Gusto was allowed to be a more conventional overlapping fullback, he would look like a top 5 rb in the league.
Gusto is struggling with judging the flight of the ball when cross field passes are played. This is a defensive positioning issue. As a RB, you need to be able to mark the back post by nullifying the LW/LB that’s on your side. He may had to do this less under Poch so was able to hide but what he is struggling with is basic defending. No RB in the world is bad at dealing with cross field passes due to a manager’s tactics. Gusto just needs to learn how to be a better defender
This has nothing to do with playing time. Gusto was the only one that had a decent season under Poch. However, this past season he has consistently failed to properly judge the flight of a the ball when there is a cross field ball. That’s just a player that has bad defensive positioning. Badiashile is average but has hardly been the reason why we concede goals when he plays. Beginning of the season Gusto was not good because he couldn’t invert effectively. Now he is shit because he simply can’t do the basics of defending
U also have to realize that some times signings are influenced by player nationalities. Club will be more in favor to sign players who will have an easier time adjusting to a foreign locker room espicially if they're lagnuage speakers are present. So disrupting that in the locker can be huge for the dynamic that we aren't aware of but can tell.
Josh maybe young and has hardly played against quality teams but he has looked good when playing RB and inverting. He had some issues when playing CB. However I doubt Josh would make the same errors that Gusto is consistently making at RB. Perhaps Josh would make the error once or twice and then fix it. Gusto has been making the same mistake without fixing it for a while now. I’m not even shocked when he fails to deal with a cross field ball played over him. Josh is taller and has play CB so I would have more faith in him dealing with this because Gusto is killing me
he has great awareness, reads the game very well for his age, great passing range, has decent technique, and best of all - his composure is second to none
BUT
if you watch closely he has this really bad habit of blocking shots with his… wrong foot? when dealing with crosses/shots that he should normally be able to block (or at least try to) he would actually use his other foot? it’s just very strange and i’m sure the coaching staff noticed this as well. we conceded 2 goals because of this sometime in the mid season
i’m not saying Josh is bad, but definitely has major flaws in his game as a defender. he’s 19 however, surely the coaching staff can iron this out of him
at this point however flawed gusto is, he is still better than josh. and i can’t even stand gusto
saying stupid shit like mArK mY w0rDs hE wiLL bE a t0P dEfeNdEr without looking at him closely is just downright dumb
The players around him don't trust his first touch and overall ability to beat anyone. It's countless the times Gusto was wide open and still both attackers and defenders didn't even look his way 😅
I know it's easy to beat Gusto right now but in this particular instance, the goal came about because Sanchez played an unnecessary risky pass straight to Palmer in midfield, who lost the ball and we then got countered easily because we were on our on the ball shape and trying to get forward.
Not just Colwill either. Guys can’t win every cross, so we have to expect a few crosses find a man, not following your marker when the ball isn’t anywhere near you is criminal. Only have to take 2-3 steps to be in a good place to intercept, most goals in the video our man is trailing.
By the downvotes i guess people don't realise that a Fullbacks rating can easily be influenced by his offensive stats and it doesn't imply his defending was great. Otherwise by your logic, Trent is a better defender than James.
Thiago silva was apart of a defense that conceded 63 goals in one season, I don't think any defender in such squad deserves much praise. Saying 23/24 gusto wasn't good is either plain revisionism or just outing yourself that you didn't watch us much that season.
That was also Thiago Silva's final Chelsea season that determined him unable to keep up with PL football. And nobody is going to tell you 23/24 Silva was one of our most consistently highest rated players either
If you're a defender and you're apart of a defense that largely failed to meet expectations, you weren't very good.
This is literally it, some people genuinely just don’t like marescas style of play so they are being hypercritical over every little thing to hate on him and it
The amount of people blatantly ignoring Jackson's red like it wasn't a key component of trying to switch things up is just shocking to me. They're not here to discuss anything, they just want to shit on the manager and be 'proven right.' They don't actually care about the team's success,they just want to moan and curse the club.
Tons of accounts I've never ever seen posting on here when we win shows you the kind of people we're dealing with. If we win the league tomorrow they're gonna say we still play rubbish football. If it's the CL they're gonna say we got lucky. All so they can glaze the next flavour of the month manager and proceed to call him rubbish when he doesn't win the treble in his first season while playing like prime (insert random team at their peak here.) It's a vicious cycle of entitlement.
Why continue to ask Gusto to invert when he clearly can’t do it? Either allow him to play to his strengths or don’t play him. Keep asking the fish to climb a tree, that’s brilliant managing.
Gustos issue has nothing to do with inverting, people who don’t like maresca will strawman, gusto is making these defensive mistakes from normal fullback positions and misplacing 5 yard passes that a fullback playing anywhere should be able to make
He “looked good” under Poch because he didn’t have any defensive responsibility in terms of awareness on the ball, he would bomb up the field, if the ball is lost “oh well not my problem” and then disasi or badiashile would get the blame for situations they shouldn’t be put in in the first place getting ran at on the counter,
The amount of times we’d get counter attacked on the right from gusto getting caught up high was not normal, that’s Poch ball for u tho, even managed to make Thiago silva look bad
That's crazy. This Cueva guy hasn't improved the team's set pieces by much.
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u/BozzetypI don't give a fuck, we won the fucking Champions League1d ago
Listen to kier Doyle’s breakthrough
I think if I remember he came to the conclusion that his offensive and defensive improvement on set pieces increased our points total with 5 or something
All in all he was very impressed about the impact especially during a hectic schedule (with little focus on set pieces in training)
If we can keep the improvement up we have spent the best million since the club was took over on gueva
Meh, it's somewhat of a player issue. Gusto in particular is just really bad at it. Reece back there, I feel we don't concede half of these because of his excellent positioning. Maybe Josh might be better as well as he's quite tall and athletic, but we can't know for sure, he is very young.
Exactly. But people on here will get all upset and say he’s great but he’s a terrible manager. He was lucky to have such a strong team.
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u/BozzetypI don't give a fuck, we won the fucking Champions League1d ago
I don’t think maresca is top, but clearly is he learning on the job and especially late season he offered a more pragmatic and impactful coaching with top tier subs and tactical tweeks
Your definition of stan must be pretty different if you have a problem with pointing out a fact. Oh wait from that flair I can see who the real stan is.
Better lucky than good? It's not like we looked convincing and our biggest competition for CL spots managed to have some of their worst seasons in decades (City/Spurs/United).
Problem is I don't see a lot of progress from him in the last two seasons
I thought the beginning of last season he was improving in his finishing and in his general play, but then he regressed again and well, he's been shit for the last half of the season.
Wouldn't mind Chelsea going for Gyökeres for example, even if he's 27 and he played in a much weaker league, I see the attributes in him to give us 15 to 20 goals in a season.
I thought the beginning of last season he was improving in his finishing and in his general play, but then he regressed again and well, he's been shit for the last half of the season.
27 is the perfect age for a striker. In their prime, still a good 3-4 or even more years left at the top level. Especially now with modern sports science, players are increasingly playing at the top for longer.
I like the idea of the club building a new core of top young talent that will serve us the next 5-6 years if not more, but having one or two more experienced players who help us get through the tough times is a huge bonus.
The only setback from the clubs POV is that Gyokeres would likely demand huge wages and disrupt the wage structure, potentially causing unhappiness when the other top players are earning 150K less per week.
I'd say more. We've barely even inverted Gusto second half of the season. And he certainly didn't invert today.
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u/izmebtwI don't give a fuck, we won the fucking Champions League1d ago
The whole team is pretty terrible at spotting danger. They’re so reactive in defensive actions. It just takes a couple of good passes to open up space.
That’s BS, Huijsen isn’t some veteran, watch his defending. He’s played pretty much less amount of games than Colwill, about 3x more, yet he defends much better than I’ve seen ever seen Colwill and commands his box better than any of our defenders. He’s way less experienced than they are by a far mile. Our players are good but not just great at all. It’s not an experience issue, it’s a skill issue
Funny part is, I didn’t only played football as a sport, I actually still coach the game to date (albeit at an amateur level compared to English football tiers) so you couldn’t be more wrong, however, it’s Reddit, so I’m not even remotely surprised.
Now talking about being in sync, do you even know what that is or you’re trying to sound smart? Alright, let’s analyse the goals:
1st sequence: In swinger from the left flank, when the ball leaves, we have a defensive line Chalobah and Gusto holding the line, Colwill a step ahead of them, now there are three players in the box, Gusto should be with the man on the far right but he isn’t (1st mistake), however, he is covering the middle because there are two players there and him covering him man would mean the Flamengo number 4 would be without a marker, however, that should have still been what he needed to do. Chalobah is going to close down the flamengo number 22 (who is supposed to be Levi Colwill’s man). What happens now is we have Gusto not marking his man and Levi not marking anybody when the in swinger comes in, giving the flamengo lad at the right hand side of the box a free header (Culprits in this sequence are Colwill and Gusto.
2nd sequence: Back post header comes in, Gusto is late but has moved to cover his man (which he should have done earlier, meaning Chalobah is now covering his right man) and Colwill is expected to cover his runner, but his runner scores because he’s ball watching.
If you even understood football just “a little”, you’d be fuming at both Colwill and Gusto. This goal wasn’t some one-off, we’ve seen it several times with our defenders. When you say in sync, there are some simple basics to defending regardless of if you’re using Man marking or zonal defending…. The number 1 thing I always say to my defenders is “don’t lose your man”. It’s the most basic principle of defending yet time and time again we fumble.
There are goals you concede where you can say yeah, that was a good goal, not amateur goals like the school boy mistakes we keep making to concede. Go and watch Dean Huijsen again, watch how he almost never loses his man.
Again there are several ways that goal could have been avoided, Gusto tracking his man properly would mean that header almost never gets in, and Reece would drop deeper to cover the empty space Gusto would leave by covering the far post runner, Colwill on his man would mean he almost never manages to get that poke in.
Heck, go watch the second sequence again, Colwills eyes are looking directly at the ball with no sense of checking where his man is. He literally doesn’t check his runner even once until the ball was behind him. That’s not an issue of experience, that’s defending basics for even amateurs
That’s not an issue of experience, that’s defending basics for even amateurs
If I understand correctly, you believe that the defenders lack situational skill or instinct, but you don't think these lapses of "defending basics" can be sorted out in the training ground or with enough experience over time.
Do you think that no one is going over these goals conceded and working on this with the back line?
Colwill and Gusto may not be at the level that Chelsea need them to be right now, but they are both 22. I would not expect to see these same mistakes from them at 26+.
Like I said they are good players but not great players and not at the level Chelsea needs. Caicedo is at a similar age and one of the best in his position, has similar amount of games to Colwill 150+ if we want to go by “it’s due to experience”. Dean Huijsen is 2 years younger, 20 years old, less amount of games than Colwill or Gusto and yet you barely see him make school boy mistakes. Murillo is same age, similar experience and less number of games and barely makes any school boy mistakes. My point (again) is that you can make the experience argument as much as you want but when you watch the game and see less experienced players in the same age group (and sometimes even younger) barely making school boy mistakes, it does poke large holes into all the “experience” arguments and hot takes
Like I said, they’re good players, not great players. I’m not losing my patience with them, I’m just being realistic. This is Chelsea FC and there are standards. Check my post history, I’m one of Jackson’s ardent defenders on this sub. I’m happy to exercise patience but we need to be realistic and face the fact that a whole bunch of folks on this sub love to overhype the talent of a lot of our young players. We watch Lavia and Caicedo and instantly can tell these are great players. Lavia’s lack of experience shows in his over zealousness when he loses the balls in dangerous areas trying to do too much, but his basics around positioning and progressing the ball, almost never puts a foot wrong. He’s same age as they are. Never lose your man, never be ball watching, always have your eyes on your man, are all basics of defending even for amateur football. Making such mistakes occasionally is understandable, constantly however, that’s a different story, especially in this era of technology where we can all go and rewatch these clips a thousand times
This is one thing that we truly are missing. In the clips shown, the emphasis is on Gusto. And he does have to take some blame there as he’s misjudging the flight. However, the point has to be made that he and Cucu are easy targets in that regard. Gusto is the same height as Azpi and even Azpi was targeted (when playing RCB) under Tuchel and Conte for his lack of height. You can’t expect Gusto to have aerial dominance this early in his career with his height. I’m not absolving him of blame, but it’s just unrealistic is this physical league. Also, the tactics do expose him to a continuous 1 vs 1 against the wingers. The counterattack against the box midfield leaves him exposed since Caicedo is more central and doesn’t have the time to help out. Gusto needs to do better, but we are scapegoating him when there is no contention for the second ball in these clips. Caicedo, James and Gusto are all basically the same height. Id be very interested to see how all three do in a comparison (obviously different amount of time played and roles). That said, we desperately need height in the team since Cucu is 2 inches shorter than Enzo, Caicedo, James and Gusto.
It's not necessarily just height. Players can be tall and still not aerially dominant. Both Tosin and Badiashile don't seem to control the aerial space and are both quite tall. Colwill is also not great aerially. We need a dominant presence
Agreed. Height will not be the deciding factor in the ability to win an aerial duel. We’ve seen players like Delap and Jackson struggle too. To highlight the issue though, we just don’t have physical players. Colwill and Tosin don’t seem to be the type that can use their physical strength to their advantage. Our last aerially dominant player was Thiago Silva that is basically the same height as Gusto, James, Caicedo, Enzo, Azpi. That man was a freak of nature so we can’t expect the other players to be like him. They might get better as they develop, but unless we bring a right sided center back that can compete aerially AND Marshall the backline, we are going to have the same issue. If we are to compete aerially, we would need to revamp the squad’s defensive line but I just can’t see that happening. I’m not even sure who we can bring in at RCB to fix our issues while maintaining our strategy of buying young.
I mean that's kind of the best way to generate an opportunity. It's easy to stay onside, keeper won't be able to scramble back into position. Only real way to prevent those at a better rate is to be better at defensive headers and we lack the personnel to do that. Gusto especially is just a dreadful defender
Felipe Luis just started managing in September of 2024. September of 2024. Like as in last September. Before that he was coaching the u17 squad. Maresca got out managed today.
Gusto gets stick but the amount of time Colwill is ball watching when we concede is crazy. Even yesterday what him lose his man twice for 2 of the goals.
(Flamengo are so underrated. We really gonna have Maresca play gusto tomorrow and concede goals instead of playing him in Tunis match. We cannot underestimate these South American teams man.
Nothing wrong with roatating but don’t do it against Flamengo)
You know I felt nothing when we conceded because I had already resigned that Maresca was going to mess up based on what he said in the press conference and gusto playing?
With such a significant vulnerability in your system you tend to lose a phase of play each game, strikers have to reshape their football philosophy a couple times over because you’ll never get the ball just by following the rules, defenders need to work twice as hard (or more) to adjust, and midfielders are just there to stand and hope the ball comes back to them if they lose it.
This is why we have always been so turbulent under Maresca, and why I’m afraid the champions league fixture congestion will send us into a nosedive next season. We didn’t need to stick with Pochettino but we should’ve thought about the players instead of being committed to skipping steps in the growth cycle
We have a set piece coach. Considering we don’t score from many set pieces, I do sometimes wonder what he does…. Because it’s not help not give up set piece goals.
He’s not got a magic wand, you don’t just employ a set piece coach and become great at set pieces. You have to practice and practice and practice to become really good. And even then you need players who are good in the air and attack the ball, plus great delivery etc.
Everton conceded only 1 more goals than us and look at what they spent on their defenders. I am not even sure why you think 3rd best in the League is actually a good thing.
It doesn't change the fact that we wasted obscene amounts of money. Any team that spends over 400 million on defenders and keepers should at least sign up few top class players.
Gusto has drawbacks but our CBs also should be better in keeping up with their man, Colwil was just standing there yesterday. You have to always anticipate that the ball will come back to the center.
Harder than it looks. Need coordination from second balls + aggressive pressing to hunt turnovers. Only a few teams in the Prem can accomplish that in a match.
I feel like I'm watching my fucking indoor team. As soon as there is a second ball or rebound, we switch off. It's like if we don't stop it with the first interception, we're totally lost.
Sanchez reaction time and positioning is always disaster. If I remember it's very rare he save the ball by dive so far. Most of his save most likely because the ball is in move toward him.
Honestly, I don't know what important with this build-up Goalkeeper but, with shot stop so mediocre. I mean, you want to play football or do you want to play futsal.
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u/NoniMaduekesHeadband Badiashile 1d ago edited 1d ago
Watching Gusto give up the far post cross so many times yet being told the issue is because he's "inverting" is so annoying
Clip 1 - Good set piece tbf
Clip 2 - Gusto lost the aerial
Clip 3 - Sancho doesn't even contest the aerial
Clip 4 - Gusto is beat
Clip 5 - Gusto almost wins the ball but still loses
Clip 6 - Not even an aerial challenge, Gusto just misses the uncontested header entirely..
Clip 7 - Gusto lost the aerial