Defeated twice by the same score (2-1) by Chelsea in the group stage of the Champions League in 2019, the Mastiffs arrive in London with the fangs but also with the status of outsiders. They will try, Tuesday, February 22, to make the bookmakers lie, while a Lille victory at Stamford Bridge is listed at 10. In difficulty in the league, with an eleventh place, Losc will still have a hard time facing the new champions of the club world.
Losc “has nothing to lose”. If Chelsea, reigning European champion, is the big favorite in its confrontation with Lille, the London coach, Thomas Tuchel, is wary of the Mastiffs. Not very brilliant in the league, like their sad draw against Metz (0-0) on Friday, the Northerners have been much more flamboyant in the Champions League since the start of the season and finished at the top of their group ahead of Salzburg, Seville and Wolfsburg.
With Chelsea, Jocelyn Gourvennec’s men did not inherit the most lenient draw: “In the use of the ball, there is a big technical base. It’s a team that likes to sit its game by building inside. They have very attacking lanes. They are also strong defensively. It’s a very complete team”, analyzed the Lille coach at a pre-match press conference on Monday. But the feat remains possible for the Mastiffs, provided they take advantage of London’s weak points and the absence of major players, such as Mason Mount, Reece James and Ben Chilwell, injured.
And the main weak point of the Blues at the moment is Romelu Lukaku. In the absence of his main ball providers, the Belgian is going through a bad patch, like his match against Crystal Palace on Saturday, during which he only touched 7 balls in 90 minutes. “There are stats that have come out, they show he’s not involved in our game but sometimes it’s like that with strikers, when they struggle to have confidence, to find spaces”defended Thomas Tuchel, also saying that the solution would come from the player himself.
Never has a player who played 90 minutes touched so few balls since Opta worked on the Premier League
Lukaku in difficulty, reason for hope for Lille? #CHELOSC pic.twitter.com/0ZJXag4lJV
– Canal Football Club (@CanalFootClub) February 20, 2022
If the Chelsea attack has not been flamboyant lately, one man is doing well: Hakim Ziyech. The twirling winger, scorer in his last three appearances, will be the main threat for Lille and for Gabriel Gudmundsson, the Dogues left-back with a more attacking profile than Reinildo, who left for Atlético Madrid this winter. To contain the Moroccan, the Northerners will have to show solidarity defensively: “You will have to know how to manage the weaker times, it will be fundamental”insisted Jocelyn Gourvennec.
And to upset an airtight defense, the Mastiffs will have to regain their superb attack, a sector where Burak Yilmaz shone last season, before losing ground this season. The other Lille striker, Jonathan David, has remained silent for the last six meetings, and the departure of his friend Jonathan Ikoné to Fiorentina in January may have had something to do with it. But if Lille are struggling to get chances against low blocks, they should take advantage of more space against Chelsea to operate on the counter-attack, their strong point.
One last parameter remains to be worked on for Lille if they wish to return from Chelsea with a good result: concentration, and this until the end of additional time. A concentration that has already failed them on several occasions at the end of the match since the Mastiffs have conceded 10 goals beyond the 80th minute of play in 34 games in all competitions this season. As Jocelyn Gourvennec concluded on Tuesday, facing such a team, “the challenge is enormous”.