I've been saying that for quite a while now. The midfield is the engine room, games are controlled from there, not from defence or attack. Get your midfield right, the defence should just be there to clean up and your attack to finish off.I can see the game quite well I believe (still easier when actually playing it than watching) but I'm useless at spotting a tactical change(s) made by the oppo, it's obvious that player 'x' has been brought on but it's really hard to assess what they are doing that's changed/improved their team and even harder to work out what needs to be done to counter it.
But I was hugely impressed with the first half, I never expected we'd play with a high press under Nuno. His comments after the game have also given me some positive vibes as he's said he wants to build on that (whether he does we'll just have to see).
Somewhat difficult to have a plan b when your bench is still massively light, it somewhat reduces the options. A complete guess here but if Bergwign or Lucas were on the bench that might have still enabled us to get behind Chavs with longs balls and for us to drop into a midblock??? For me though, any plan goes out the window once the control of midfield is conceded, this is our issue.
It's telling that we were at our absolute best when we had midfielders like Dembele, Wanyama and Modric winning and recycling, with the likes of Eriksen then able to pull the strings, all from midfield.
So many on here were banging on about how our defence needed strengthening, we needed another striker etc, when the key issue always lay in midfield as the primary concern.
Chelsea made one key change to undo us, that was to bring on Kante. Once they won the midfield battle, the game got away from us.
The hope I have is that Sarr will turn out to be that key midfielder for us, in that Kane role, but we'll have to wait and see on that.