Thomas Tuchel knows how to win semi-finals, that much is clear.Yesterday at Wembley our head coach succeeded for the 11th time in 11 attempts at this stage of knockout competitions spread across his native Germany, when he was working in France at PSG, and now at Chelsea where he has contested two FA Cup semis as well as ones in the Champions League, Club World Cup and Carabao Cup.It did however need some quick work from Tuchel at half-time against Palace to ensure our passage into our 16th FA Cup final. For the start of the game our opponents Crystal Palace switched from the 4-3-3 shape that had got them so far to a 3-5-2 formation, with Cheikhou Kouyate moving back from midfield to become one of three central defenders.

Rather than this shape shift being a way to mitigate the absence of on-loan midfielder Conor Gallagher, Palace’s most influential player this season, their manager Patrick Vieira explained it was to set Chelsea some different challenges, saying:‘It was just to match their front five, and not to give them that opportunity to run between our normal back four. At Selhurst, we suffered a lot from them creating overloads on the side, and so we changed to stop that.’Tuchel after the game admitted it had worked initially, stating: ‘We did not expect that so there were not the same spaces to explore that we thought we can explore. We tried to find different spaces in the second half to overload the middle, to accelerate the game towards the box in the last third a bit more easily.’

Going for goal

That the change to the Chelsea approach after an uneventful first half bore dividends is clear from the two goals scored. Our amount of ball possession remained more or less the same throughout the game – two-thirds of it in our favour (it was important a side that had played extra-time in Madrid while our Wembley opponents had a free week was not asked to do too much ball chasing) – but from that same share of the ball we upped our shot count considerably in the second half, with nine efforts on goal compared with three in the first half, and three on target compared with one.

It is also true that Palace increased their shots to five following just one before the break, but they only managed one on target in each half.The first one forced the save of the game from Edou Mendy when he denied Kouyate, who despite his deeper position managed to match Mason Mount as the most prolific shooter in the game. Both had three attempts at the target. Hakim Ziyech managed two shots in his 15 minutes on the pitch as the game opened out more.Chelsea’s passing accuracy rate increased in the second half too – and that was with 10 per cent more passes played after the break. Our accuracy went up from 85 per cent to 90, and the precision was one of the clear contrasts between the two sides on the day. Palace’s overall pass completion rate was down at 75 per cent.

Reece remains

With his initial selection, Tuchel made no radical changes to the side that had performed so well in the Bernabeu. For fresh legs he brought in Andreas Christensen, Jorginho and Cesar Azpilicueta, and with the skipper returning there were plenty of reasons to anticipate a return to right wing-back for Reece James. Instead the England international was retained on the right of the back-three defence where he had impressed against Real Madrid.

That had James in the right place to deal with the Eagles dangerman Wilfried Zaha, who spent more time on the left of their attack than his strike partner Jean-Philippe Mateta, and Tuchel’s system generally gives licence for the two wider central defenders to get forward when appropriate.James still sent over more crosses than anyone else on the pitch, with four, although his position did put a limit on his chances to do so and indeed Chelsea’s second-half tactic of overloading the middle of the park and attacking Palace down the middle is reflected in our overall crossing stats. We attempted just five crosses in the second 45 minutes.

Fluid attacking threat

Over in the centre of the pitch, Ruben Loftus-Cheek matched Zaha for the game’s most dribbles with two apiece, and the former Palace loanee scored his first Chelsea goal since the Europa League semi-final of 2018. Between those games he scored on loan at Fulham in November 2020.Timo Werner, the competition’s official man of the match and the choice of voters on the 5th Stand too, could not add to his recent goal spree but in addition to his assist for Mason Mount to make it 2-0, he managed an additional four key passes that created chances to score.

Chelsea had aerial superiority with 16 contests won to Palace’s 12 although they did come out top in marginally more duels and tackles. Jorginho was our top tackler with four won. Christensen made the most clearances in the game.We have now won 10 straight games against Crystal Palace for the first time in our history. Having won all four FA Cup ties he played against Chelsea while an Arsenal player, Palace boss Patrick Vieira has at last tasted defeat in the competition against the Blues.While talking about Arsenal, we will be the first team to play in three FA Cup finals in a row since the Gunners did so in 2001 to 2003 (the middle one of those against the Blues in Cardiff).With Liverpool awaiting us in May, it will be just the second time the FA Cup final will be a repeat of the League Cup final in the same season. The previous featured Arsenal as well, when they faced off against Sheffield Wednesday in two finals in 1993.