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Jose fine-tuning his formation?

Firstly I want to thank Blue Champion for inviting me to co-post to his excellent blog and his first request of me is to write a piece on tactics and specifically whether Chelsea should employ – 4-4-2, 4-3-3 or 4-5-1.

Now when it comes to tactics, you are talking to ‘old school’ here. Only known to 4-4-2 and now we have got 4-3-3 or 4-5-1, but honestly isn’t 4-3-3 and 4-5-1 the same. NO it isn’t unless you work for or support Chelsea FC.When Chelsea use 4-3-3, to everybody else its boring boring 4-5-1, but if any other club uses 4-3-3 its exciting, fashionable and in vogue and depending what type of club you are in the sea of the football world, the media can make 4-5-1 look exciting too!!

When Chelsea first won the title way back in 1955 it had to be 4-4-2 that was employed by manager Roy Bentley. During the heady years of Dave Sexton’s success: FA Cup in 1970, Cup Winners Cup in 1971 and the losing League Cup final to Stoke City in 1972, again tactics had to be 4-4-2.

You look at the players in Sexton’s days: The late Peter Osgood (Striker), the late Ian Hutchinson (Striker), the late Peter Houseman (Left winger), Charlie Cooke (Right Winger), Tommy Baldwin (Midfield), John Boyle (Midfield), David Webb (Central Defence), John Dempsey (Central Defence), Ron Harris (Capt and Right Back), Eddie McCreadie (Left Back) and finally Peter ‘The Cat’ Bonetti (Goalkeeper).

Try and get a 4-3-3 out of that lot. It was a straight 4-4-2. When you look at the team that John Neal and Ian McNeill produced with the likes of David Speedie, Kerry Dixon, Pat Nevin, Joe McCloughlin and the like, it was always 4-4-2.

Glenn Hoddle began to muddle the waters when he became Chelsea manager in that he introduced zones into his play and on the training ground and critics say after Hoddle left Chelsea to become England manager that his methods were worse than rubbish. Look at Chelsea’s League record in Hoddle’s Chelseas tenure. 13th, 13th and 11th plus a losing FA Cup final to Man Utd.

But look who Hoddle brought to the club. Yep Ruud Gullit and look who Ruud brought to the club. Vialli and then everybody wanted to come to Chelsea – Zola, Di Matteo, Poyet, Lebeouf. You name them, they wanted to join.
Vialli using 4-4-2 in its basic sense gave us the League Cup, FA Cup and the European Cup Winners Cup.

Then we had Mr Nice Guy, Claudio Ranieri. All he wanted to do was to ‘arrive’ first everytime. Claudio success was to get us in the Champions League with that famous victory over Liverpool at Stamford Bridge, which had it not happened, I may not be here to write this first piece.

But it was Claudio that really and seriously clouded the waters with tactics that nobody understood. Called the ‘Tinkerman’ he tried to fine-tune a Chelsea side at every possible moment and perhaps his ‘tinkering’ got to the players and after the defeat in Monaco and having Huth up front with Jimmy Floyd Hasslebaink at right-back sealed his inevitable fate.

So bring on Jose Mourinho. His third year at the club. Already back-to-back Premiership winners, Carling Cup winner and a winner of the Giant Frizbee Shield or in other words the Community Shield.

4-3-3 is Jose’s favoured formation, no doubt about that. But without Joe Cole and Arjen Robben or Shaun Wright-Phillips playing together Jose can’t play it and to be honest little Shaunie hasn’t quite cut it yet playing under Jose’s direction and tactical planning. Also I am sorry to say, but Shaunie needs to work on his first touch, which since he has been at Chelsea is quite appalling, but Shaun always gets my support from my touchline seat at Stamford Bridge.

I actually think that Jose has been found out with the 4-3-3 or the 4-5-1 formation as it proved during the latter the part of last season. But when you sign the quality of Ballack and Shevchenko you are hardly gonna leave them two on the bench, plus when you get Michael Essien playing superbly and Jose publicly saying the he will ‘never rest or drop’ Super Frankie Lampard, you have got no choice but to play 4-4-2.

Drogba has been supreme since he got his head together and stopped all the embarrassing diving and histrionics and Sheva’s time will come, although for his age and price tag, his clock is starting to run down!! So formation wise with Makelele or Diarra in front of the back four, the formation is really 4-1-3-2.

Football has become an art of science nowadays (and I do not have a degree to understand it all) but, just ask any ‘old school’ Chelsea supporter and all they want is for the players to give 110% for the blue shirt and the badge.