The scoreboard may have read 3-0 in favor of Chelsea at the end, and Ange Postecoglou may have already had his bags packed as a consequence, but it was hardly as dominant of a win for the Blues against
Nottingham Forest yesterday as that would suggest.
With a bit more luck and a bit more accuracy, Forest could’ve easily jumped out to a multi-goal lead before we even settled into proceedings, while we were also saved by the woodwork in the second half when Forest tried to mount a comeback from two goals down.
Most of those chances for the home side were a result of some familiar attempts at self-inflicted wounds, made worse by it being a lunchtime kickoff following an international break. These games tend to be full of mistakes, and that’s certainly what we saw for the first 15-20 minutes.
“My message at half-time was [that] the way we are pressing, we are good. On the ball, we are not good enough. Because first half, we made three or four mistakes in the build-up, when we conceded. […] We can avoid that. […] It’s sloppy. We looked sloppy in the build-up. We made some mistakes that were not good enough.”
That half-time message was underlined with a triple substitution, which then immediately paid dividends with two goals in three minutes after the restart.
After that, it was mostly a question of not making any more silly mistakes, and we largely avoided that though Malo Gusto still managed to get himself sent off late to keep our red card-streak alive.
“Sometimes I’m wrong, sometimes I’m right [with the team selection] but in this moment, it’s more about protecting players. We already knew that Roméo was not going to play 90 minutes [and] Moi cannot play 90 minutes.
“[…] But also we planned the game expecting them back four, not back five. I think back four with João Pedro at No.9 is better. With back five, João Pedro at No.9 is not… [so] then after half-time, we changed.”
-Enzo Maresca; source: Football.London
All’s well that ends well!
