The thing is on paper it was one change, but in reality it changed everything.
We missed everything that dinho offers, defensively, breaking things up early on, playmaking from deep and his leadership.
By playing gundo as the holding midfield we then lost what he offers as the 8, controlling the game, keeping the ball and his goal scoring exploits ( I mean he’s our top scorer this season ffs).
We started de bruyne as the false 9, which we probably would’ve done anyway, but that’s fine when you’ve still got creativity in midfield, but by putting gundo deep and kev further forward we’ve taken our two best creators out of our midfield.
Then there’s sterling, completely hung out to dry starting and hasnt done anything to warrant a place in the eleven in recent weeks. He’s out of form and by playing him anyway it meant we then had two wingers cutting inside, which completely played in Chelsea’s hands, for both mahrez and sterling to be effective they have to cut inside, chelsea stocked the middle of the pitch and even with the fullbacks both doing a number on them anyway, even when they did get past them (which was rarely) they were met with a very tight narrow chelsea back 3 and a double pivot in midfield that was blocking the entrance to goal.
sterling and mahrez have a history of not playing well together, and starting with them two it took Phil out of his best position, fodens most threatening when running at players and stretching fullbacks wide getting around the outside, and he was played in such a way that wasn’t possible for him tonight. He’s been a revelation this season in the big games so why oh why oh why not play him where he’s been doing the business
foden and mahrez gives us excellent balance on the wings which transpires to the rest of the team. perhaps another consequence was that zinny wasnt able to move into midfield too much, which along with everything else ive previously mentioned maybe explains why we struggled keeping hold of the ball and creating anything.
I know this is a very long winded post but to believe it’s mainly on the players and pep didn’t tinker and ‘it was only one change’ bladdy bladdy blah is just bollocks, the entire system changed and our game massively suffered because of it