Welcome to our football.london Chelsea media watch piece. Maybe not the first, we've definitely done transfer round-ups before, and European round-ups, so I guess in some ways it's not that new at all. Anyway, we thought we would enter the world of football in a broad and roundabout manner for you and have some fun with some of the stories and captions doing the daily rounds.
Keeping an eye on Zenit
Chelsea faces Russian side Zenit St Petersburg in the group stages of Champions League, this coming Tuesday. They made a comfortable 3-1 victory over Akhmat Grozny in the Russian Premier League in Saturday’s game.
Brazilian national players, Wendel and Malcom both got on the scoresheet, with midfielder Aleksandr Yerokhin also scoring.
Chelsea begin their Champions League defence against the team on Tuesday night.
Ronaldo advantage for Chelsea
The silver lining in Cristiano Ronaldo’s move back to Manchester United is clear for Chelsea - in the Champions League anyway. Group stage opponents, Juventus are not doing so well in Serie A after the Portuguese’s departure.
Ronaldo scored two goals on his return to Old Trafford, in a comfortable win against Newcastle United.
Whereas, Juventus currently sit 16 in the table, starting their season with a draw and ten two consequent losses. On Saturday they lost against Napoli, who are playing in the Europa League - drawn in the same group as the English side, Leicester City.
Former Blue Alvaro Morato opened up the scoring, but Napoli came back to score two goals and take all three points.
Malmo drop points
Swedish side, Malmo dropped two points into added time at the very last minute of the game, to mid-table IFK Norrköping. Nigerian player, Samuel Adegbenro scored five minutes into additional time to convert a header past goalkeeper, Ismael Diawara.
Ronald Koeman praises Tuchel formation set-up
Barcelona manager, Ronald Koeman has said that Thomas Tuchel’s use of the back three in a 3-5-2 formation is the ‘benchmark’ for how it should be done.
Koeman explained: “The best Barca last year was in 3-5-2. We managed to maximize Busquets, we had few attackers available.
“Chelsea are the benchmark, they play in 3-5-2 and are not defensive. We must also see in relation to the workforce available.”
Chelsea showed that the system works once again, against Aston Villa on Saturday - where Tuchel played Trevoh Chalobah, Thiago Silva and Antonio Rudiger.
