Sarri seems to be the hardest word - part 3

Time's up?

Let me get this out there from the start: there is no shame losing to this particular Manchester City team. I might even claim it’s a badge of honour. But going into yesterday’s game at the Etihad, I wasn’t expecting much, as a Chelsea fan. Not that I don’t have any faith in Chelsea, even given their recent run of away results, but Pep Guardiola is currently custodian of a team that will punish anyone with elan. That doesn’t make them infallible, as they found at home to Crystal Palace before Christmas, but their results against opposition, big and small, have shown a propensity for telephone number scorelines. Which should have put Chelsea on their guard before the abject capitulation at the Etihad.

Before 4 o'clock yesterday I wasn’t even that concerned that I’d be spending the first half listening to radio commentary of City-Chelsea while driving home on the M25. I just didn’t expect to be 4-0 down by the 24th minute. At that point I came close to petulantly switching the radio off, but even then Dion Dublin, BBC 5 Live’s co-commentator with John Murray, was still of the opinion that Chelsea might be able to dam the flow of City goals and restore some pride. I was less positive: scorelines like that rarely get turned around, if ever, and if they do, you wouldn’t get this Manchester City team folding up and switching off. As they showed against Burton Albion, they are decidedly ruthless when on a killing spree. And thus they proved. 6-0.

So, hats off City, I knew you’d beat us. I just didn’t know how painfully you’d do it. Which brings me to Chelsea and Maurizio Sarri’s future. There’s an interesting comparison to make here between the two managers on the touchline yesterday at the Etihad: Guardiola has been given the time, space and resources to create this squad. Chelsea won the Premier League title in Pep’s first season at City, implausibly accelerating away from the chasing pack by Antonio Conte’s tactical switch to a wingback system that caught everyone off their guard. Meanwhile, Guardiola was rebuilding. Down the M64 at Liverpool, Jurgen Klopp was in the midst of doing much the same. Between them, they’ve had two and four years, respectively, to get their teams to where they are now. Will Sarri be afforded the same latitude?

It’s unlikely. Chelsea’s philosophy in the Abramovich era has been consistently short-termist, even if it looked like a slight change of strategy had been adopted with Sarri. If Chelsea would only come out and say that’s how they do it, we’d all accept it. Only the most naive manager would join the club in the expectation of seeing out their career there which, I suppose, is fine. The chances of another Alex Ferguson or Arsene Wenger putting in double-digit tenures at a Premier League club (or, indeed, anywhere else) are now unlikely, anyway. Again, fine, but in the case of Chelsea, there has been a distinct lag between head coach turnover and squad evolution. The elephant still in the room after yesterday’s horror show in Manchester is that the squad Sarri is playing with, or at least trying to convert to his philosophy, is still rooted in the Mourinho Mark II and Conte group of players. Change seems to be a problem for them. So yesterday’s game, plus the recent pounding from Bournemouth, should be attributed to a combination of Sarri’s unbending view that his possession-based system is the one and only, and that the players can switch off just when they need to dig in and fight. Much is said about Sarri’s lack of a Plan B, and when, yet again, you see like-for-like substitutions being made (though at least Kovačić on for Berkeley came in the 54th minute, rather than the usual 72nd…), and nothing changing in the fundamentals, you wonder if the Italian’s rigid adherence to Plan A will ever shift. Some might even admire his obstinacy, but he’s now starting to look like King Canute.

Sarri’s appointment last July was always going to be a gift to headline writers, which is why this is the third time I've blogged about Chelsea and used the generous pun you see at the top of this page (and thanks, too, to Elton John). Yep, I know it’s lazy, but the Italian is a gift that keeps on giving. His protracted appointment - delayed by Napoli, somewhat childishly, stalling his release while they onboarded former Chelsea boss Carlo Ancelotti as his replacement - was made just three weeks before the Blues’ first competitive game of the season, the Community Shield, which they lost 2-0 to Manchester City. At the time (and since) Sarri was cut some slack, the line being that it takes time to build a team, to get them to adopt a philosophy. Sarri was appointed largely because of the attractive football he’d instilled in Napoli, which enabled them to keep pace with runaway Serie A leaders Juventus. Six months on, it’s patently clear that what worked at Napoli is not working at Chelsea, what may have fitted the pace of Serie A is not fitting the Premier League.

What is most troubling is that Sarri is starting to exhibit the same truculence that Conte adopted, and that didn’t fair well for the previous Italian in charge at Chelsea. Though not as obvious as Conte became, Sarri’s current demeanour is not the kind that Mr. Abramovich and his acolytes appreciate. But before the inevitable P45 is dispatched Sarri’s way, I seriously hope that Abramovich, his de facto chief executive, Marina Granovskaia, chairman Bruce Buck and the other members of the club’s football board, David Barnard, Guy Laurence and Eugene Tenenbaum, take a good long look at the state of the team. Until yesterday, Chelsea had maintained a top four position in the league, which is probably all that could be expected at this stage of a new head coach's tune with this particular squad. And even when the wheels first fell off, against Spurs in November, they were lashed back on to record wins, including a 2-0 defeat of Manchester City at Stamford Bridge However, the bolts securing those wheels keep shearing. Yes, Chelsea remain in four competitions, but the topography of results that got them to this point is decidedly uneven, perilous even.

Next up will be Malm ö away in the Europa League on Thursday night, then a resurgent Manchester United next Monday in the FA Cup 5th Round, followed by Malmö at home in a second leg, with the run of immediate challenges ending with Manchester City, no less, in the League Cup final at Wembley. Big decisions, then, for the football board at Stamford Bridge. Fire Sarri now (and I wouldn’t expect club legend Gianfranco Zola to remain on the management team, either) and the club enters dangerously familiar territory: the final third of a season with honours on offer, but a caretaker in charge. Yes, that worked a couple of times with Guus Hiddink, Robbie Di Matteo even won the Champions League, and the toxic appointment of Rafa Benitez still netted Chelsea the Europa League trophy. But there’s only so many times Hiddink can be parachuted in, and you don’t see Zidane donning a hazmat suit to join Chelsea for the remaining four months of the season, unless there’s a desire by both him and the club to make it permanent. Plus, it’s just not going to happen, anyway.

However, all this is grist to the mill. Something has to change fundamentally at Chelsea. First up, is the relationship between head coach and the club’s football board. After technical director Michael Emenalo left for Monaco in November 2017, the link between the board and the club’s playing elements disappeared. Marina Granovskaia assumed all control over player acquisitions and divestments. The coach appears to become nothing more than a consultant in the recruitment process (although Sarri managed to persuade the club to bring in his trusted lieutenant Jorginho from Napoli, as well as - finally - Gonzalo Higuain on loan, another player with positive Sarri experience). But that has been all. Questions must also be asked about the state of a squad with access to so much academy talent, and yet no intention of using it. I’ll come back to Callum Hudson-Odoi in a moment.

The lack of true leadership on the pitch is the other major area of concern. Yesterday’s match in Manchester highlighted the absence of blood-and-guts at Chelsea. That was never the case when it had, at its core, leaders like John Terry, Frank Lampard, Didier Drogba and Petr Čech, a spine that would take the game by the scruff of its neck when it was needed. As much as I like César Azpilicueta, he’s no Terry, and having been one of Chelsea’s best performers over the last couple of seasons, has not looked as effective this term. That may be down to his captaincy (favoured over the unfavoured Gary Cahill), something that has a habit of diluting ability (once dubbed 'The Botham Effect" after the mullet-haired cricketer's powers wained after he was made England captain in the disastrous 1980 test series with the West Indies).

However, when there are players who need no motivation at all, Sarri doesn't use them. Principally I'm talking about Hudson-Odoi: the precocious 18-year-old may well still need to know his place, but his pace and strength are the very attributes Chelsea have lacked in recent performances. Sarri clearly isn’t sure about the teenager, and with Chelsea managing to ward off Bayern Munich in the transfer window, the club needs to reach agreement on what they do with him. It was almost painful to see the teenager yesterday, not even on the bench but in the seats behind the dugout reserved for squad members who travel but are not on the team sheet. Sarri’s treatment of Hudson-Odoi has been nothing short of scandalous. A player who wants to play, who can play, who can give the fans something to cheer about. And what did Sarri do, once Bayern Munich’s overtures had been conclusively (for now) rebuffed in January? Drop the player for the Bournemouth match on the grounds that he’d only played three days previously. Hudson-Odoi might as well start learning German now, because he’ll be out the transfer window as soon as it opens in the summer.

José Mourinho spent the last four months of his time at Chelsea playing Russian Roulette, almost literally. Then, he was sacked when Chelsea had plummeted from previous season’s league champions to 17th, just above the relegation zone. He was sacked in mid-December when it was still possible he could have turned things around. The Chelsea board didn’t see that as possible, and fielded then-technical director Michael Emenalo to tell the press about the “palpable discord” between manager and players. Today, Chelsea are only in sixth, on points. At any other club, that - and the fact they’re still battling on four fronts - would not set off any alarm bells. Chelsea, however, are not any other club. Sarri, or anyone else, should not think for one minute that Abramovich’s visa or business issues should be a distraction. The next few days - or even the next few hours - could prove to be another disrupting chapter in the recent history of Chelsea Football Club. Sarri would be the expected casualty, but if he does go, serious questions need to be asked about how Chelsea’s boom-and-bust cycle needs to come to an end.