Chelsea 1 - 2 Liverpool (Community Shield 06/07)

The Lateral Vertices of the Diamond Ballack and Lampard are switching positions often while lateralizing the game, they switch flanks and pass the ball when doing so therefore the ball stays in the same flank but under the possession of a player with different caractheristics in an effort to confuse Liverpool's midfield markers who are not swapping positions even when Chelsea's "ball carrier" switches.

GOAL LFC at the 8th minute, John Arne Riise, ZERO pressure by Essien in the centre of the Defencive Midfield, a complete "Highway".

Without Makelele to protect their backs we see Ballack and Lampard playing deeper in midfield and with less elasticity going forward and seem more worried over getting countered than attacking, this indicates lack of confidence in Essien. Ballack and Lampard are already yellowed out.

Geremi is clearly the offencive Full-back today, he keeps going forward much more than Ferreira and Pennant is constantly entering Chelsea's Right defencive corridor in Geremi's abcense and bombing out 35 yard crosses into the box trying to surprise Ricardo Carvalho (on the right of the defencive axis). John Terry seems more worried about "filling" up the space between the Centre-Back pair and Essien.

Without Crespo, Gallas, Makelele and with Essien now playing 25 yards South-West of his usual position this Chelsea team seems deprived of it's automatisms.

25th minute sub, the excellent Salomon Kalou replaces Michael Ballack. Will Chelsea switch to a wide 4-3-3 later in the game with Robben and Kalou in the wings?

Kalou has positioned himself at "Inside-Right", this Chelsea team has 6 players playing outside their proper position. Essien's attempt at first touch football are amateurish.
With Essien and Kalou in midfield this Chelsea team will become even more porous in the centre than before. Will Mourinho eventually attempt a shift of Ferreira to "Inside-Right" and switch Geremi to DM?

GOAL CFC, Sheva at the 43rd minute, assist by Frank Lampard, when Lampard can go forward there's a clear improvement in Chelsea's attacking dynamic but with only Essien and Kalou to secure the midfield it's understandable to see the Englishman picking his spots. The overrated Jamie Carragher was beaten like an amateur in the Ukrainian's goal.

Shevchenko needs to operate on the edge of the offside because when he tries his inward movements from the left flank to the centre with his left to the goal to shoot with his stronger right foot it is an extremelly predictable play because everybody can see what he's going to do because when he comes from left to centre he never (ever) passes the ball and always shoots sideways to the goal with his right.

Arjen Robben needs to stay in the locker-room before the 2nd half starts because his sprint is just not there right now and he keeps falling to the left flank and isn't doing the transition play that Mourinho expects of him to link Lampard and Kalou to the 2 forwards.

53rd minute sub, Wayne Bridge replaces Geremi, Paulo Ferreira now switches to the right, now at least Chelsea has 2 Full-Backs on the pitch and now Ferreira will be the attacking FB and Bridge the Contention FB and we can expect Chelsea's right side dynamic to increase as even Kalou is starting to go forward more.

62nd minute sub, out goes Robben and in comes former Le Havre FC product Lassana Diarra (DM) the heir to Makélélé according to JM.

70th minute sub, out goes Drogba and in come Shaun Wright-Phillips, this indicates a tactical shift to a 4-3-3 with SWP and Kalou flanking Shevchenko, the game is about to gain speed.

Diarra who was strangely playing on the upper tip of the diamond since coming in now with the tactical rearrengement to a system with 2 DMs comes back to play alongside Essien as the 4-3-3 variant of 4-2-1-3 takes shape in a team which now pressures deeper in it's defencive midfield and very little in the middle as Lampard stays in CM as the pivot not unlike Sporting in the final minutes Vs Braga a week ago. Kalou is on the left of Sheva and SWP on the right of the Ukrainian, this 4-2-1-3 seems awfully defencive for a game which is still tied 1-1.

GOAL LFC, John Terry "eaten" by Peter Crouch inside the box.

81st minute sub, out goes Ferreira and in comes John Obi Mikel. Chelsea shifts from 4-2-1-3 to a more aggressive variant of the 4-3-3 in a 4-1-2-3 with Diarra moving to Right-Back (now Wayne Bridge becomes the attacking FB and Diarra is the contention FB), Essien remains as the single DM and Mikel and Lampard increase the pressure in the attacking midfield as Chelsea looks to attack with 6 units, Sheva, SWP, Kalou, Lampard, Mikel, Bridge.

No yellow card for Diarra at the 90th minute? This referee must be blind.

Game over, Liverpool wins and deservingly so, Liverpool played well and some times very well while Chelsea played VERY poorly no matter what the pundits say. The blues had a good spell early in the 2nd half but for the most part lacked personality. The 2 English media darlings Terry and Lampard were on the pitch and Chelsea didn't win while Claude Makélélé wasn't and Chelsea lost, when will people understand that he is Chelsea's most pivotal player? When the Frenchmen didn't play in the tail end of 05/06 Chelsea looked terrible.

John Terry was very much beneath his usual standards today and if Essien is worth 35 million then surely Sissoko must be worth 150 because I continue not to understand what anybody sees in Essien?
Even in the WC he wasn't as good as Appiah. and at Lyon he wasn't as good as Mamadou Diarra? I've been saying it for a year, swapping Tiago's passing quality for Essien's brainless tackling ability was a colossal error by Mourinho as Chelsea lost it's midfield transition unit between Makélélé and Lampard, an error that JM is trying to correct by having Lampard in Tiago's CM slot and Ballack to eventually play the Nº10 role.



André