Chelsea F.C vs. Norwich City F.C: Why Andre Villas-Boas Flunked Today's Match

I want my sleep back.

I woke up at 5:45 am this morning, anxious to see Chelsea take on Norwich City. I had reason for optimism: Chelsea had won three games on the trot and had a full week of rest to prepare for the game.

Unfortunately, the men from Stamford Bridge didn't reward my early morning efforts with anything approaching a good performance or good result. The Blues proved utterly devoid of ingenuity in front of a stalwart Norwich defense, resulting in a drab 0-0 outcome.

Given Chelsea are in fourth place in the league, 11 points behind leaders Manchester City, today's draw feels like a case of two points lost, rather than one point won. It will now take something akin to a miracle for Chelsea to win the league, and on the basis of today's abject performance, they'll have their hand's full securing a spot in next season's Champion's League.

After disappointing results like today's, there is a temptation to jump all over the players and the manager for not doing more. I'm usually reluctant to do so because a proper post-match post-mortem requires that emotions die down.

But today, I just can't resist criticizing the overall performance of manager Andre Villas-Boas.

That's because Villas-Boas did not organize his team to breakdown the very obvious defensive tactics Norwich deployed. Coming into the game, any fan could anticipate that Norwich would get men behind the ball and clog up the middle of the pitch. It's what numerous other teams have done to frustrate and stymie the Blues. Just see recent games against Wolves and Portsmouth for examples.

But today, Chelsea showed very little evidence that any preparation for dealing with such a defense had been done in the week leading up to the game. The team lacked width, few players ran into the box to capitalize on crosses and Fernando Torres seemed to be instructed to battle for balls in midfield rather than to simply concentrate on causing havoc in the penalty area.

Indeed, the team had 59 percent of the possession in the match, but generated only a few clear chances on goal. Eventually, the players had to resort to hopeful long shots, such was their utter inability to open up the Norwich defense with incisive play.

A good view of Chelsea's tactical ineptitude could be seen in their poor use of corners. Chelsea won 11 of them in the match, yet not one troubled the opposition. Corners offered Chelsea a golden opportunity to correct for deficient open-play performance. But they didn't capitalize on them.

Although numerous players performed poorly today, the tactics deployed by Andre Villas-Boas set them up for failure. He didn't instruct his players to do anything special or different to break down the Norwich defense. It reflects poorly on the manager's tactical acumen and proves he has a long way to go before proving his bona fides at the club.