Enzo Maresca picked out Chelsea’s pressing and the way they competed with Fulham physically as something he was really “proud of” from the Blues’ win yesterday.
Marco Silva’s team are certainly no pushovers, and as Maresca noted, they really went man for man on us and caused a lot of problems. It was only late on, when they sat back and tried to protect their lead, that we were able to break out and take control of the game.
So do the stats back up Maresca’s assertions? Chelsea won 54% of their duels – 28 of their 54 on the ground (52%) and 10/17 in the air (59%). They also completed 7 of their 11 dribbles in attack (64%). They beat Fulham across the board there.
They actually did better against Ipswich a week ago, although that probably is simply because Fulham present a more difficult team to face physically. Certainly they improved massively compared to their game against Brentford, another really physical team, where the Blues only won 41% of their ground duels and only completed 31% of their dribbles.
Chelsea limit Fulham’s attackers with strong performance in duels
Marc Cucurella and Moises Caicedo won the most duels, while Trevoh Chalobah won 100% of the ground duels he contested, keeping Whites’ striker Raul Jimenez totally quiet – he didn’t take a shot in the game.
It was great to see the team compete against opposition who make things tough, in their stadium and in game which we really needed to win. We need to make that a weekly occurrence, and hopefully having players like Nicolas Jackson returning to full fitness, as well as introducing fierce competitors like Tyrique George and Reece James to the mix more regularly will help with that.
This summer, the likes of Andrey Santos and Dario Essugo will arrive to add even more grit to this group.
