Match date: 15 February 2014

Just 12 days ago, these two sides met in a Premier League match, at the Etihad, with Chelsea winning 1-0 on the day. It was a tight affair that day, with Manchester City starting as the better side, but the counter attacking threat of Chelsea winning out.

For this match, both managers made a few changes. With John Terry out injured, Mourinho opted to move David Luiz from a holding midfield role, that he played in the league match, to a centre back role alongside Gary Cahill. John Obi Mikel came into the holding midfield role. Pellegrini made numerous changes, however. Lescott came in for Nastasic, Clichy for Kolarov, Jovetic for Negredo, Milner for Navas, Javi Garcia for Demichelis, and Pantilimon for Hart.

City Tighter

One of the crucial points to Chelsea’s win against City in the league was the ability for Willian and Hazard to receive and turn with the ball into space. Hazard in particular caused City’s back line trouble as he was able to complete 11 of his 15 take-ons. Throughout that match, Hazard consistently drew numerous City players to him once he turned and started dribbling with the ball, which left his teammates open in the space vacated by City defenders drawn to the ball.

For this match, Pellegrini clearly instructed his team to get tight to the likes of Willian and Hazard so that if they did receive the ball, it was going to be difficult for them to turn with it. Below, you can see an example of just this. Kompany tracked Willian all the way to the halfway line before making a tackle on him.

Hazard and Willian failed to have the same type of impact on the match as they did in the league because they could not find the space to do so. Hazard’s impact on the match was also limited because of the work rate of James Milner, who had the most tackles in the match with five. In the corresponding league match, Jesus Navas was preferred over Milner, but his defensive work aiding Pablo Zabaleta was lacking and allowed Hazard too many one on one opportunities with the Manchester City full back and left Hazard with too much space. With the City defenders tighter to Hazard and Willian and the work rate of all of the midfielders when working back much better, Chelsea’s threat on the counter attack was null. There were numerous times when Chelsea would be looking to break, but a Manchester City midfielder would be able to poke the ball away from behind.

City Control as Yaya Sits

In the league fixture, far too many times Manchester City were caught on the break because of their shape. Demichelis started in the holding midfield role that day, and while he won a few tackles, he was exposed when Chelsea countered, being too off the pace coming from midfield to support his defenders, sometimes leaving them in numbers down situations. However, much of the play was not the result of Demichelis, though he was far too slow to keep up with Chelsea’s counter attacks. Yaya Toure was just as much to blame for the poor City defending as he ventured forward far too often leaving Demichelis exposed against a very narrow Chelsea midfield.

With Javi Garcia in the deepest holding role and and Yaya Toure sitting deep as well, it meant that Chelsea had less room to break into and also allowed City to have a player of Toure’s quality a bit deeper to pick out passes when they were in possession of the ball. Toure rarely got forward as much as he did in the league fixture, his telling contribution being a typical run from deep that saw him make Cech save into the path of Jovetic, who just barely put the ball over the goal.

As mentioned before, the Manchester City midfielders were very good at working back to make recovering tackles when the likes of Hazard and Willian were able to turn with the ball, and Yaya Toure was a good example of the work rate that the midfielders put in. Numerous times he found himself in tussles with Mikel and Matic and earned himself a yellow card because of them, but it encapsulated the work rate that Pellegrini wanted from Toure.

There was good fluidity from City’s attacking players. All of City’s forwards, Aguero, Jovetic, Negredo, and Dzeko, all have the ability to drift into the wide areas of the pitch when David Silva comes inside into a number 10 role and tonight was no different as Dzeko would drift out left and Jovetic would find the open spaces as he did for his goal. Milner was much more rigid on the right hand side of City’s attack, but he added balance, as does Navas when he is selected, and added defensive help on Hazard while also allowed Zabaleta to get more involved in the attacking phases of the match than Navas’ presence would have allowed.

Chelsea’s Organisation

Over the past few months, Chelsea’s defensive record has been improving. Earlier in the season, there was a loss at home to Basel, a 2-2 draw at home against West Brom, a 4-3 win against Sunderland away, and a 3-2 loss to Stoke away. However, with the partnership of Gary Cahill and John Terry, Chelsea have found organisation and stability at the back. Terry, unfortunately, was not fit for this match and Gary Cahill just passed fit to be involved, but the lack of organisation came from Terry being replaced by David Luiz. The Brasilian has played well in a holding midfield role over the past two seasons, first under Rafa Benitez and now under Mourinho, but at times his concentration seems to be lacking when he is played at centre back.

The first goal was the result of both Cahill and Luiz getting dragged to the ball and Milner acting as a decoy run to get the attention of Azpilicueta, allowing the space to open up for Jovetic to run into. The blame here doesn’t necessarily lie on Luiz, in fact it was Azpilicueta that should have stuck with Jovetic rather than get drawn by the run of Milner, but he only did so because neither Cahill or Luiz stepped to the ball and neither tracked Milner’s run. The second goal was much more Luiz’s fault as he appealed to the linesman for offside rather than tracked the run of Nasri.

Changes

At half time, Mourinho opted to bring on Mohamed Salah for Samuel Eto’o and pushed Hazard a bit further up the field. The intention behind this seemed to be to try to draw Yaya Toure out of his defensive duties a bit more and try to overload the midfield a bit more with Salah dropping deeper than Eto’o had been. Toure was disciplined though. Mourinho’s next change was bringing on Fernando Torres for Ramires, moving back to more of a 4-3-2-1 rather than a 4-2-2-2 that Mourinho tried for the opening 15 minutes of the second half. At the same time that Torres came on, Nasri came on for City and had a telling impact just minutes later with a goal after a good one-two with Silva in Chelsea’s box.

At 2-0 up, Pellegrini brought on Jesus Navas for Silva, moving Nasri through the middle behind Dzeko and the Negredo, and Milner to the left. With Chelsea needing to push forward, the pace of Navas allowed City to play out balls to that side in hopes of killing the match off with a counter attacking goal.

Conclusion

Chelsea had 0 shots on target throughout the match. A statistic that tells the story of an improved defensive performance from Manchester City. By not allowing time and space for Hazard and Willian, Chelsea were unable to threaten the City defense and struggled to impose any attacking play on the match. Eto’o looked very isolated at times and City’s possession and positional play and pressing when they lost it aided to the frustrations of Chelsea.

Pellegrini still doesn’t have a good record against Mourinho, but in this case, he was able to out do his rival on the tactical side of the match. Manchester City’s next match is against Barcelona in the Champions League and a defensively disciplined performance from Yaya Toure, like he had in this match, may be City’s best chance of a successful tie.