Hence my second reason -- Ngolo Kante
How many times have managers complained that playing against him is like the opposition having an extra midfielder?
Ageing world class players aside, it's also the system. It's a gross over-simplification of course, but there is a school of thought that says that, if you win midfield, you win the game. And you could do this by simply overloading the central midfield -- there's no point in the other team having an extra man in defence, attack or on the wings if they can't get the ball to them.
In my opinion, that's what happened. We essentially had Hojbjerg and Bentancur, with a little help from Romero, Kulu and Kane. Chelsea had Kante and Jorginho with A LOT of help from Mount and some help from Havertz and James. In theory, that would give us more space on our wings...but Chelsea's WBs managed to snaffle that out, with help from a very good midfield/forward press.
In fact, Football365 have done a piece this morning that explains it all far better than I could. A "box midfield" (2 in front of 2) that they've previously used against Barcelona, no less!
https://www.football365.com/news/th...ranscend-obvious-faults-chelsea-squad-opinion
Rather than focussing on the shortcomings of our players, perhaps we should put our hands up and acknowledge that (1) Tuchel won the tactical battle, and (2) Chelsea have some very good players, some of whom had very good games.
What I really liked was Conte using subs to change our formation which, coupled with Kante's injury, brought us back in the game. Tuchel then reacted, taking advantage of our new shape, before Conte rolled the dice again and went for it. It was an incredibly dynamic game tactically. It could well have ended up with a crushing 4-1 defeat, but that doesn't get you any fewer points than going down 2-1. And of course, we've finally got quality on the bench that can make that difference.