In September 2016, after Chelsea had lost limply away to Arsenal, Antonio Conte laid into the “bad attitude” of his players. They went on to win their next 13 league games and by the end of the season were Premier League champions. Perhaps Maurizio Sarri hopes for something similar after his attack on the “mentality” of his players following Saturday’s limp defeat away to Arsenal which was, if anything, even more ferocious. Perhaps there will be a reaction. But at half-time in that 2016 defeat, Conte also made a major tactical shift, adopting the back three Chelsea would play for the rest of his tenure. Sarri seems unlikely to change anything.
The situations are very different. Conte had been using a back four rather than the back three he instinctively preferred because he felt the squad was more attuned to that; as it turned out, the 3-4-2-1 he subsequently adopted, despite it meaning the reinvention of Victor Moses as a right wing-back, proved ideal for the players. Sarri, though, is already playing the style he wants.
When Chelsea appointed Sarri, they knew what they were getting. He has a plan and a style and he uses it. It is what has elevated him, without any professional playing background, from being a banker to managing a thrilling Napoli team that pushed Juventus as close as anybody has in Serie A in recent memory. He did at one time play with two holding midfielders but that was at Sorrento seven years ago. Since then, at Empoli and at Napoli, it has always been 4-3-1-2 or 4-3-3, there has always been a regista operating just in front of the back four and a possession-based approach founded on that metronome establishing the tempo. That is Sarri-ball and, if that is not what you want, do not appoint him.
But is Chelsea’s squad set up to play that way? When Roberto Mancini was sacked by Manchester City because they wanted a more “holistic” approach, there was widespread derision. But Chelsea is what happens when a club is not holistic, when players are bought and sold and managers are appointed and dismissed without anybody ever seeming to link the two together. Just because José Mourinho shouts a lot does not mean there is not sometimes a wolf.
Chelsea’s squad has actually over the years proved remarkably accommodating to change and at times seems almost to have thrived on chaos. But that is no way to run anything in the long term, particularly not when financial retrenchment becomes desirable. This, perhaps, is the result: a squad packed with very good players led by a very good manager overwhelmed by a general air of confusion.
Providing Sarri with the right tools means more than signing Jorginho. Chelsea already had a holding midfielder of the highest class, but N’Golo Kanté is not a Sarri-type anchor and so he has to try to reinvent himself as a box-to-box shuttler. Less willing players might have moaned but he has got on with it. He is not terrible at it and, in scoring three times, he has already equalled the career high he set at Boulogne in 2012-13, but it manifestly does not play to his strengths.
Between them Chelsea’s central midfield, even including Ross Barkley, has managed only seven goals this season, one of them a penalty. It lacks any sense of forward thrust. Flanked by players not naturally adept at the role, Jorginho is diminished, a sideways passer who slows the game down. Sit a player on him, as pretty much everybody has since Tottenham showed how effective the ploy could be, and he is not even a safe conduit for retaining possession.
But it is not just Kanté who seems to be operating out of position. Is David Luiz really better in a two than a three at the back? Is César Azpilicueta really better as a right-back than as a right-sided central defender in a three? Is Marcos Alonso really better as a left-back than as a left wing-back? Is Willian really better on the left than the right?
And that is without mentioning the forgotten men who almost never get on the pitch – Moses, Davide Zappacosta, Emerson Palmieri, Danny Drinkwater, Álvaro Morata and Olivier Giroud – walking rebukes to a transfer policy gone bad, or senior misfits out on loan such as Tiémoué Bakayoko and Michy Batshuayi.
And then there is Eden Hazard, whose exceptional form in the early part of the season disguised the awkwardness of the fit of Sarri with this group of players. He is a reluctant centre-forward but, even if he were a natural false nine, there is nobody breaking beyond him to take advantage of the space his movement creates. Again and again on Saturday Chelsea got the ball in promising areas but had nobody in the box; that is why they have not had a shot on target in more than two hours.
The expected arrival of Gonzalo Higuaín may begin to resolve the forward line – although it is unwise to expect too much too soon from a player who has never played in England before and is having the worst season of his senior career – but the sense remains of an incomprehensible recruitment policy that has paired a pick-and-mix squad with a manager who does not suit them at all.
The Guardian Sport
