His passing through the lines and composure is very underrated. And he helped us to defend higher on the pitch.
Average positions vs Chelsea
Lindelof deepest with Bailly quite far up.
Average positions of our last good result, against West Ham.
Jones deepest with Smalling quite far up.
So theres only a small distance between us having majority possession against Chelsea, and us having less possession than West Ham with Jones and Smalling playing. Theres a much bigger change in all the other players being far more spread and further forward.
Our recent games we've played 3 at the back and yes our defense have been further back in those games. Also Everton where we conceded 4, obviously our CBs were dropping deep trying to cope.
But in general its a small difference to when we were playing well under Ole before
Here's the previous win 2-0 over Chelsea in the F.A cup
Lindelof deepest with Smalling not as far up as Bailly yesterday, but Ander dropping into that space as a DM.
Here's our 1-0 victory over Arsenal in the F.A cup
We won, Bailly and Lindelof played and they were actually deeper than most of our CB pairings over the course of the season.
1-0 over Spurs in the league
Smalling and Jones this time are even deeper than Lindelof in the last example and about level with Bailly. Ander is only a bit further forward than Bailly was against Chelsea yesterday.
So if you look at it properly, all of our players were further forward specifically yesterday. Matic took on more responsibility with Ander playing further forward than the halfway line when usually he's been sitting near him. Our attackers are more spread out and further forward too.
It wasnt the personnel, it was the tactics. In general our players were deployed further up the pitch and we tried to have most of the ball unlike most weeks where we let the other team have most of the ball and we counterattack when they are out of position.