Chelsea were involved in an early kick off yesterday, taking on Burnley at home for the second home game in a row in the Thomas Tuchel era. They already showed how fast they could implement Tuchel’s ideas and tactics against Wolves… doing most of the things Tuchel wanted right but were unfortunate not to get the highly deserved win. Dominating every aspect of the game against Wolves but only left with a point. It was the second home game in the Tuchel era against a team that is very similar to Wolves in terms of how they defend very deep and wait for counter attacking opportunities or set pieces. Similar to the Wolves game, Chelsea completely dominated the game from the first minute till the last minute, limiting Burnley’s chances to only 0 shot on target and 1 shot the whole game. That showed how Chelsea controlled every aspect of the game.
Unlike then Wolves game, Burnley decided to come out to press Chelsea in some moments of the game and Chelsea used that to great effect and exploited those open spaces to create chances for the deserved goals. Even though Chelsea dominated the match and created a good number of chances, Burnley defended really well and if not for their organized and compact defending in major aspects of the game, the scoreline could have been more. With complete control of the first half, Chelsea had to leave it late… capitalizing on a counter attacking opportunity that set up Azpillicueta to score the first goal in the Thomas Tuchel era and also keeping the record of scoring for all the Chelsea managers he was played for.
The second half began and Tuchel yet again showed why he is known to be very tactically astute with early changes and formation tweaks for the second half. Even after the goal, Chelsea didn’t reduce the tempo or tried to slow things down, they kept on pushing and going for the killer goal. However, Burnley didn’t give much spaces behind even after conceding, and this made it very difficult for Chelsea to score the second goal and kill the game off. The tweak in the formation and personnel changes in the second half gave Chelsea the boost as Pulisic who was the player to come in at the start of the second half assisted the second goal that sealed the victory for the blues. Marcos Alonso who has been left out of the team during the Frank Lampard time at Chelsea, was the player that score second goal for Chelsea, doing what we all know he can do in the box, scoring crucial goals and a goal that would definitely be up there as the best of the season contender. Overall, it was a well-deserved win for Chelsea to give Tuchel his first win as a Chelsea manager.