What Liam Rosenior got “wrong” in biggest Chelsea win yet according to pundits | OneFootball

We were all stunned by what we saw from Chelsea’s starting lineup last night. Manager Liam Rosenior went with a back 3, with only one recognised central defender.

It was supposed to match up Napoli’s formation, but the whole team just looked uncomfortable with the sudden shift. The coach was soon tweaking things, and by the hour mark had Trevoh Chalobah on the pitch to return to a back four.

Chelsea recover from lineup errors and come back to win

Joao Pedro celebrates with Chelsea players. (Photo by Francesco Pecoraro/Getty Images)

While the result ended up being good, it’s fair to say that that initial idea didn’t work. On the London is Blue podcast they discussed Rosenior’s tactical adjustments here:

“I do think that Rosenior got the starting lineup wrong. If you think about Reece [James] and [Wesley] Fofana, they swapped to basically playing a back three, whether it was [Marc] Cucurella or [Malo] Gusto staying back and one of them going into midfield to try and make an overload against Antonio Conte’s patented 3-4-3,” presenter Nick Verlaney said.

“It just never really worked. It really was poor, and Chelsea were lucky to down only two one at half time with the way that they played. What I like about Liam Rosenior is that he looked at it and made adjustments. He corrected his own errors and cleaned up his own mess and that ended up working.”

You can see their discussion in the clip embedded here:

In other news…

Matt Law’s piece about Chelsea’s transfer plans in the final days of the window claims that there’s still a chance we sell Tyrique George – we believe him, but it’s starting to look like a long shot.

The Telegraph journalist also tried to explain the slightly strange Aaron Anselmino situation – the defender has been recalled, but nobody knows quite what for yet.