FanPost

The Brazilians and Chelsea - Filipe Luis!

Bleacher Report BLERGH

As dratz already made a good job writing a piece about what's expected of Oscar, I preferred to pass on my own article - which pretty much stated the same points he noted - and jump to a Filipe Luis' analysis!

One could argue that Filipe Luis was one of the players the Brazilian national team missed on its World Cup campaign. A very important player for Atlético de Madrid in Diego Simeone's 4-4-2, Filipe had great defensive numbers last season - 3.4 successful tackles and 1.5 successful interceptions per 90 minutes played in La Liga -, and he also played a key part in the team's attacking initiative, connecting with midfielder/winger Koke and appearing almost anywhere in the left flank to support the team in its attacks.

After his physical decline, Ashley Cole was left on the bench by José Mourinho and substituted by César Azpilicueta, a natural right-back improvised as an inverted left-back. Azpilicueta's defensive work for Chelsea last year was notable; however, due to not having a great left foot, Azpilicueta wasn't too incisive when Chelsea needed attacking support, as he was needed to cut inside to do so in his position.

Chelsea went after the 29 years old Brazilian player instead of signing English promising left-back Luke Shaw, a 18 years old starter for Southampton. Moving to Chelsea's rival Manchester United for a £30m fee, the Blues "snub" was criticized by part of their supporters. Still, Luke Shaw's injury ahead of the season - and Manchester United's move trying to sign Argentinian left-back Marcos Rojo from Sporting CP - might show that despite being a great prospect, the Englishman wouldn't be the answer to Chelsea's immediate lack of depth at left-back.

Luis doesn't have offensive numbers that will make your eyes pop-out, having only 2 assists in 32 La Liga games last season. He averaged 0.6 successful crosses - although it's not clear if those include low crosses as well - and 1.4 successful long balls per game.

But there are more than meets the eye in Filipe Luis' play for Atlético de Madrid last season. His versatility made him capable not only of making forward runs with his dribbling to provide width to his team or rack up amazing defensive numbers, but most importantly, it made him an underrated attacking outlet with his dribbling set and positioning prowess.

In Mourinho's first game, he didn't change the back four, probably because of how this unit worked together for almost a whole year last season. Luis doesn't have competition outside of Azpilicueta being employed in his inverted left-back role, with Ashley Cole leaving Chelsea for Italian team AS Roma and Ryan Bertrand moving on loan to Southampton. Nathan Aké, as versatile as he is, still is very far from being a Chelsea starting left-back.

He probably won't have stellar numbers, but he's more than good enough to fill in the shoes left by Ashley Cole when his form took a huge drop. Hopefully, he'll start appearing - and become a starter - at the first half of the season, when the whole team will gel together after worrisome pre-season games that, as Manchester United showed us a few days ago, don't really matter that much.

This FanPost was contributed by a member of the community and was not subject to any sort of approval process. It does not necessarily reflect the opinions held by the editors of this site.

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