What was the real reason for Chelsea losing to City?

Dhairya Pahwa

22w ago

Chelsea had a wonderful European mid-week game against Ateletico Madrid,with a last minute tap in by Mitchy Batshuayi for the win,but after only 3 days we had to face the in form Manchester City,even though our players were pushing extremely hard for an equaliser the defence couldn't break,the major reasons were-

Alvaro Morata had a muscular problem and subbed himself off,Chelsea was instantly weaker without the Spanish hit man,but the good news is that the injury isn't serious at all and with international break coming up Morata will be fit again!

Willian was subbed in place of Alvaro Morata which was a bold move from Antonio Conte,Cleary a bad decision by the gaffer

Exhausted players, it was easy to see that the players couldn't cope up with city's fully rested squad

Hope this helps!

Upvotes are appreciated!

Ajay Extross

21w ago

Both, Chelsea and City played midweek.

Chelsea had a relatively tougher opponent in Madrid than City did in Shakhtar. Additionally, City played at Home while Chelsea made the trip to Spain. Player fatigue.

Now the more important aspect. Squad Depth.

City have an amazing squad with great depth.

Depth that has players on the bench who have a wealth of experience. Chelsea have an amazing squad too, albeit enough for a starting eleven, a bench with relatively inexperienced kids in Kennedy and Musonda isn't much to boast about. Add to that Drinkwater being injured and Luiz being suspended.

Now the starting eleven on Saturday.

Conte didn't start Pedro which was puzzling especially because he didn't play midweek. The 3 man midfield which he usually takes up against big sides is the possible reason behind Pedro not starting. However, all 3, Kante, Fab and Bakayoko played midweek and the fatigue was very apparent.

The defence was pretty much as expected, however I'd rather have seen Azpilicuetta in the back 3 over Cahill. Moses as a wingback would have been able to match the pacey City forwards.

Hazard and Morata played midweek too and showed some fatigue, but in such a big game, not many would bet against Conte starting the two.

Morata pulling up early on was a major setback. His pace on the counter was lost and Willian coming on made it worse. Willian was way way off colour. Michy would have been a better bet.

The defence was solid and repelled attack after attack from City. In all honesty, though City played better and thoroughly deserved the win, Chelsea lost the game to a moment of individual brilliance from De Bruyne.

Where did Chelsea really lose the game ?

In my opinion, it was the way Conte set up. At home especially and knowing City had a relatively weak defence in comparison, Conte should have gone with a more attacking set up. Yes, taking into consideration city's attacking prowess was important but we really could have matched them with a front three in Hazard, Pedro and Morata/ Michy. Add to this Fabregas doing an Ozil and it makes you wonder what could have been.

Oh. Selling KDB was probably the main reason though.

Daniyal K. Chawla

21w ago

Conte screwed up!

Conte is a brave, reckless man. He doesn't shy away from taking risks in big games. He experiements his strategies and explores his options. Sometimes those strategies work, sometimes they go horribly wrong.

Its hard to debate that it was his experimentative, reckless nature that took Chelsea from 10th place to the 1st place in a span of one season. With that in mind, an occasional humiliating defeat to Manchester City is a small downside that pales in comparsion to the many upsides of having an empericist for a manager. He deserves a little slack for his otherwise prosperous campaign with the blues.

Morata's mid-half departure was surely an upset for Chelsea to say the least. A normal coach would have responded to the situation by replacing a striker (Morata) with another striker (Batshuayi). But that's not the kind of strategist Conte is. He used this disruption to implement a new strategy and get Guardiola by surprise. He played Willian and re-assessed Hazard's role in the match.

Did it work? Absolutely not! Was it worth a shot? In a grander scheme of things, yes it was! An occasional failed experiment is a small price Chelsea needs to pay for having an innovative manager like Conte; much more often that not, Conte's experiments work very well and lead Chelsea to glory.

Similarly, playing Azpilicueta instead of Moses was a mistake. As mediocre as Moses is, he fits surprisingly well within the team's chemistry - and to break that chemistry and over-burden Kante was not a great idea. With that said, Conte plays reckless moves like these quite frequently, and Chelsea's owes its recent success to such recklessness.

Therby, Conte deserves the margin of a few failed experiments, because some failed experiments lead to some extremely successful ones. After all, Conte’s Chelsea beat the previous season's runners-up Tottenham with two suspended senior players and two injured goal-scoring players. That may not have been possible had Conte not been reckless enough to have David Luis ditch his traditional role and play midfield instead.

So why did Chelsea lose? Conte screwed up!

Was Conte's screw up an acceptable one? Absolutely!

Grace Tan

Chelsea Fan. Flying the Blue Flag

21w ago

I'd actually pin down player fatigue.

We had a great game against Atletico Madrid a couple days before; it was very taxing on the players. Then to add on, the players had to travel to Madrid and back, while Man City got to play their game at home. Case in point- the Chelsea-Everton game where poor Everton were absolutely knackered and allowed us to run amok all over them.

Personally I feared losing more- City has demonstrated they are quite the dominant side, winning games like 5–0 or 6–0. We DID keep the scoreline respectable, and we showed fighting spirit. That’s something I really liked.

Ankit Kumar

Sungard (2016-present)

22w ago

The real reasons for defeat was

The poor team selection. If you see the starting 11 you can feel that few names were missing like Pedro, Moses, Williams.

Morata substitution was also one of the reason we were short of the striker.

Tactical failure Antonio Conte who is known for his discipline and tactical strategies was totally overshadowed by Pep Guardiola.

The weak legs when you play team like Atletico Madrid in the champions league and to win in such competition it takes out a lot and when you face teams like Manchester city just after 3 days gap it's really very difficult to match them.

Jay Shete

software enginner at Optymyze (2016-present)

22w ago

I think Morata’s substitution was the real reason.

There were many reasons along with it firstly, team came from spain had less time to recover than city.

Midfield was slow especially Fabregas, he was in the team solely for creativity so that he can provide balls to Morata. But, once he went off there was no striker, it was all defence. And, it was because of the midfield we conceded, KDB pierced in and scored.

But all in all, City os just too strong look at their bench. They got Kompany, Mendy, B silva, Yaya on the bench and Jesus/Augero.

City has spent an awful lot of money. Imagine Chelsea filling the pockets on their ex players and keeping them on bench. Lukaku, Matic, M salah, KDB, Mata would have been with us today. But thats not Chelsea we have our own individuality and if we do business its not just buying its selling too.

So overall, we didn’t play very well as champions after Morata went off, City was too strong for us, both the teams had a really good and Intensegame. Till now I would say thats the bt match of the season.

Prateek Gupta

20w ago

Most of the reasons mention above hold true with chelsea suffering from fatigue, morata injury, squad depth etc but I would like to point out the tactics from Pep also played a huge role.

Man city were solid with pep formation and with the players now understanding what he wants, we will be seeing more and more games of man city dominating other teams and even destroying them.

With two-three more signings, don’t be surprised if Man city will be very tough to beat.

Soon the PL title will become two horse race with both Manchester clubs fighting for it.