With Antonio Conte coming into the managerial hot seat at Stamford Bridge, there have been two burning questions that everyone has been asking.
1) Which players will he bring to the club from the Serie A?
2) How will Chelsea play and fit their side into Conte’s famed 3-5-2 formation?
While the manager did bring in Michy Batshuayi or at least the board did but they still will have a lot of work to do if they are to place all the players in the club in the formation that Conte is surely going to use this season, the 3-5-2.
Italy were magnificent using the formation in Euro 2016 and even Juventus, under Conte, had applied the same formation.
The use of the wing-backs is crucial to the 3-5-2 doing well while the three centre-backs have the task of just dealing with the attack, the two deep lying midfielders have to pull the strings and also help the defence out when they can.
This truly is a model that can only work when every single player pulls their weight and that should not be a worry since Conte will ensure everyone does what they are tasked to do.
With the current players they have in their fold, Chelsea would probably have Cesc Fabregas and Nemanja Matic in the heart of the midfield as the two deepest midfielders. While Cesc Fabregas would be the go to guy for pinging the ball around and creating chances for the other team members, it would be the Serbian Matic who cleans up and takes out the opposition while helping the defence whenever he can.
The two wing-backs ideally should be the players who can constantly and consistently run up and down the flank and even though Chelsea didn’t have any standout performers from defence last season, the two players who are to be starting are Cesar Azpilicueta and Branislav Ivanovic.
The Serbian Ivanovic might not be the best option at the moment but he should be given a chance to show what he can do and his energy and running could be something that Conte looks forward to.
The player who would play as a free-floater just behind the two strikers could very well be Eden Hazard, even though the Belgian had a torrid campaign last time around, he could be rejuvenated under Antonio Conte and towards the end of the Premier League campaign last season, we did see a lot of the old Hazard.
There will obviously be a lot of players who will miss out on the starting XI such as Willian, Pedro and even Oscar and it certainly will be interesting to see how the Italian manager deals with the stars at Chelsea.
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