How Pellegrini outwitted Chelsea’s midfield despite losing at Stamford Bridge

Frank Lampard and Ramires look to be Jose Mourinho’s first-choice centre midfield pairing this season. The side lost Marco van Ginkel to a long term injury, whilst Michael Essien has yet to feature in the Premier League. John Obi Mikel did come on for Lampard against Manchester City, but the Nigerian appears to be the back up option in this regard, rather than someone who will challenge for a regular starting slot.

Manchester City opted for a three-man midfield to battle Jose Mourinho’s pairing. Frank Lampard’s game is usually associated with the opposition’s penalty box but as we can see from the England international’s Action Areas map, he spent more time in his own half against Manchester City, allowing Ramires to support the attacks instead.

Lampard spent an astonishing 17.65% of the game in his own half and did not get into the opposition penalty area once, something quite surprising for a player with such a prolific goal scoring record. This complimented the performance of Ramires nicely as we can see below.

The Brazilian used his huge reserve of energy to play a box-to-box role. Lampard was sitting back, while Ramires raided forward to link the play. Lampard would then slot in to a deeper role to plug any gaps left in behind. Up against the trio of Javi Garcia, Yaya Toure and Fernandinho, the Chelsea pair were outnumbered in the middle of the park. In fact, City created a number of chances in the central areas because of this.

The above graphic shows that City created eight chances in the central areas that we’d expect Ramires and Lampard to be marshalling. The significance of this is that it shows how City attacked these areas by overloading these areas. Oscar was tasked to pressurise from the front in the number 10 role, so he couldn’t drop into provide extra numbers, while Hazard and Schurrle needed to keep Chelsea’s width, to avoid congestion when building attacks. Meanwhile, David Silva and Samir Nasri were able to drop into midfield positions to make it five against two in isolated situations. With Manchester City playing away from home, there wasn’t a need for them to constantly play on the front foot.

Manuel Pellegrini selected a side without any natural width, with Silva and Nasri either side of Sergio Aguero, so the plan was to pick holes in Chelsea’s defence in central areas. This is a sign of Manuel Pellegrini outwitting Jose Mourinho in his tactical setup. Lampard and Ramires didn’t have particularly bad games, Ramires in fact had an impressive first half, but City’s shape was well equipped to contain the Blues attacking threat and hurt them going the other way. Had Joe Hart and Matija Nastasic not combined to hand Fernando Torres an injury-time tap-in, we might have been talking about Pellegrini’s tactical masterclass.