Chelsea squeaked past Lille in a fun game in the Champions League, but their defending was not up to scratch.
No surprise then that Rio Ferdinand, acting as a pundit on BT Sport, in quotes carried by Football London, was laying into the Blues backline.
It was criminal defending from a set piece once again, this time allowing Victor Osimhen a free run at the ball to head home and level the scores.
It was a terrible piece of play, and Rio was totally justified in his critique of our ongoing problems in that area.
“I don’t like zonal marking and this is a definite reason why,” the former Man U star.
“Here’s your goalscorer, nobody gets anywhere near him at all. This is the space that worries me when you’re doing zonal marking, there is nobody here and that’s a big area for someone to run into unopposed,” he went on, really hitting his stride.
“They have conceded goals all season, and I never liked to do zonal marking as a player. Not one person is there to challenge him. Players are just looking at the ball and they don’t see what is behind them. It creates problems and it creates tension and worry,” he concluded.
Now we don’t agree that zonal marking is necessarily bad – plenty of teams use it very successfully. But it’s clear that it’s not working for us right now, and massive changes are needed.
I mean we actually can’t get any worse at defending them, so anything is worth a try.
