Tribalfootball.com's tactics expert reviews Chelsea's thrilling 4-3 victory over Manchester United on Thursday and says despite the seven goals the tactical key to the game was the defensive structure of both teams.

A tale of transitions, this 4-3 thriller played out exactly as was expected between two teams that consistently raise the tempo, look to progress quickly and often find themselves in back and forth games.

This can be seen with 7 goals, a total of 47 shots (28 for Chelsea and 19 for United), and 15 shots on target (10 for Chelsea and 5 for United). The game was played at an extremely high tempo, with both teams opting to attack with pace rather than slowing it down and taking any control.

The two things I am going to point out in this write up are the structural rest defence issues for Chelsea and United, and how both teams encouraged chaos…

CHELSEA DEFENSIVE STRUCTURE (REST DEFENCE ISSUES)

The first thing I wanted to point out in this write up was Chelsea's defensive structure, more specifically their “rest defence" structure.

This was commonly the shape that was formed for Chelsea in the first phase of build up, Cucurella would start deeper but then push on slightly to provide an outside passing option for Caicedo to progress play.

However it's when the ball turns over that this became an issue (and considering this game was played at such a high tempo, the game was littered with turnovers, creating chaos).

Whilst it was mistakes that opened Chelsea up to a lot of these transition attacks, United's third goal highlighted exactly where the issue lies.

This image shows Benoit Badiashile top of the screen, who has made the error and lost the ball out of position, this leaves Marc Cucurella and Moises Caicedo retreating on that left side, Axel Disasi covering the central zone, Malo Gusto trying to get back to Alejandro Garnacho.

This image from seconds before the Badiashile turnover shows two United players ahead of the Chelsea “rest defence" with only Disasi behind the ball and United players out of shot.

Following the mistake, this means United have a 2v1 break, with the onus being on Caicedo, Cucurella and Gusto to recover at pace. When Cucurella is ahead of the ball this advanced, Gusto's positioning should be deeper closer to Garnacho.

Enzo Fernandez is also advanced into a higher area (something Poch has done regularly this season) meaning he is also not there to provide protection on the break). This happened throughout the game, and much of this was due to Chelsea not slowing down the tempo and stabilising their position on the pitch, causing this end to end frantic game.

Gusto being the more naturally attacking fullback, he would often be advanced on the right to offer width outside of Cole Palmer. This gave Disasi extra defensive responsibility as when the ball went into the right channel, Garnacho was able to pick the ball up almost unopposed and drive at pace.

Disasi doesn't have the ground covering capability to win those 1v1 duels out wide, close the space and slow down the attack for his retreating defenders, and this often led to chances for United. The difference here is that the “top" sides have physical recovery defenders such as Kyle Walker for Man City, William Saliba and Declan Rice for Arsenal, Ibrahim Konate and Virgil van Dijk for Liverpool. Even the likes of Micky Van de Ven for Tottenham were bought in for these purposes, to defend and contest wide transitions.

UNITED DEFENSIVE WOES

From a United perspective, they have also been fairly easy to manipulate this season when dragging players out of position, and creating a big gap between the midfield and defensive lines.

This image shows Raphael Varane who has followed Nicolas Jackson all the way into Chelsea's half, allowing him to turn out, and funnel play down the left which gives Chelsea the space to attack.

Highlighted in the white circles, you can now see how far away the Manchester United centre back pairing are from Wan-Bissaka (the right back) this allows Cucurella to run into the space behind which should be covered by one of the two central defenders, but instead is being tracked by Antony.

Cucurella gets away from his man, gets on the ball in the box and draws the penalty, which was just one example of Chelsea dragging United's defence out of position and manipulating the space behind.

CONCLUSION

To conclude this game, I always expected it to be a basketball game type fixture, end to end and transitional.

Both teams have poor defensive structures, can be dragged and manipulated far too easily, and suffer from individual errors/lapses in concentration.

A great game for the neutral, but a game that both managers deep down will know was far too open and chaotic.