Oscar withdrawal and Ramires switch cost Mourinho the game

José Mourinho's defensive approach worked PSG…until he abruptly changed it! With no faith in Fernando Torres after his erratic performance at Selhurst Park, with Samuel Eto'o injured and with a lack of trust in in Demba Ba, Mourinho is clearly not happy with his strikers' performances, so he opted to play Andre Schuerrle as a false nine in front of a packed midfield featuring Ramires, David Luiz, Oscar, Eden Hazard and Willian. The duties were set with Ramires chasing Marco Verratti and Oscar covering Thiago Motta. This gave Blaise Matuidi enough freedom to become a factor on the left side. And in fact, Matuidi managed 64 passes with a 88% of pass accuracy and 4 crosses, having an impact in creation being involved in the first two PSG goals. The midfield three Mourinho selected suggests his idea was to contain PSG’s midfield trio, playmakers Verratti and Thiago Motta in particular. The game plan of shutting down both them worked nicely as they suffered Chelsea’s pressure and failed setting the tempo. Playing Luiz as holding midfielder helped too as the Brazilian made Zatlan Ibrahimovic ineffective when he was dropping deep to act as an advanced playmaker. So Chelsea were balanced defensively and the positional play from Verratti and Motta was under control until Mourinho elected to replace André Schuerrle with Torres and Oscar with Frank Lampard, switching Ramires into a right flank role.  It simply conceded Motta to play effectively as deep-lying midfielder and gave Verratti to become the playmaker he wasn’t allowed to be in the first half. With this formation on field, Chelsea showed all their inability and discipline to defend deep.