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A win, but without a good performance
Celta clearly had enough chances to equalize the score. As it’s routing this season, we started the game worse than the opponent and they could have scored just in the beginning. Our defending continue not to be good.
As we discussed during the game, there were 2 changes in Carlo’s tactics for this game: 1) Tchouameni was in the middle of the CBs with the ball and Jude played in the right side.
Carlo was asked about this change. From his comment, I got the impression that the defensive formation should have stayed as 4 in the back, with Tchouameni pushing into into the second/midfield line.
Yes, Bellingham’s position changed. The idea was to have him entering in their box from the second line and from the right side, because Celta in previous games suffered with ball in the second post. In this sense, we tried Bellingham in this position and I liked it a lot.
With the ball, Aurélien [Tchouaméni] has played in the middle of the center-backs. There we had a balance problem, because without the ball he should stay back, but without the ball he should go high up, with center-backs going narrow. So we got it wrong in this sense, I haven’t explained well this to the players. We changed a little in the second half, opening Tchouaméni a bit to the right, but building from the back with 3.
Carlo was asked if this change suffered from the lack of time to work on given the international players returned late from the break:
We don’t have to put to much work on this, it’s sufficient that Aurelien puts himself in the middle of the CBs. The truth is that what we didn’t work on was when the ball was lost, he went higher but the CBs remained open. We can adjust this, but it’s not something we do always. We can do it in some games, to build from the back without too much pressure. In other games, with different formation from the opponent, we can play as usual, with the pivot in the front of the CBs.
Therefore, I think it’s clear that two changes were done specifically to Celta, instead of new tactical idea to the team. Let’s see how the team will behave vs Borussia on Tuesday.
