Too much, too young?

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The sight, on Sunday afternoon, of Theo Walcott coming on for Everton as a substitute against Chelsea provided a curious premonition of the news yesterday that the 18-year-old Callum Hudson-Odoi had been called up by Gareth Southgate to England’s senior squad. Because it seems like only yesterday there was all that brouhaha over Walcott, at a slightly younger age, being included in Sven-Göran Eriksson’s England squad to play in the 2006 World Cup. Even now there is the oft-repeated refrain that Eriksson ruined Walcott by including him and that he was never the same again, which is nonsense as, at 17, he was not the finished article to begin with.

That has been much the same sentiment conveyed on Hudson-Odoi by Maurizio Sarri, his head coach at Chelsea, who has so far refrained from including the exciting winger in a Premier League starting line-up this season, preferring to give him the relative nursery slopes of the cup competitions. Sarri has maintained that Hudson-Odoi still has a lot of development to achieve, that it would be "dangerous" to put too much pressure on him, and that the teenager could only become "top" player a few years from now. This has been a recurring managerial philosophy at Chelsea, a club blessed with an insanely successful academy set up, but one with a ceiling made of inch-thick plate glass.

At Stamford Bridge and at away grounds, there only has to be mention of Hudson-Odoi's name over the tannoy, or a glimpse of him warming up for the Chelsea support to break into "Oh, Hudson-Odoi!", sung to the tune of Seven Nation Army. Like his elder teammate and fellow Chelsea Academy product, Ruben Loftus-Cheek, there is genuine excitement for the youngster. Of course, Sarri is right in that he has a lot of improvement ahead of him, but his pace and confidence is something that clearly Southgate wants to tap into. The prevailing Sarri mood, however, is still 'wait and see'. "He will be ready to be at the top at 22 or 23 years," the Chelsea head coach told the media after Chelsea's Europa League first leg tie with Dynamo Kiev, in which Hudson-Odoi came off the bench to score. "We need [him] to improve without the media, of the pressure of the media, fans, the club," conceding that "His training is really very good." But..."When you have pressure when you are 18 it is dangerous, you can lose the target. The target is to improve. So it is dangerous. This is why I don't like to speak about him."

And so Chelsea are left with a conundrum: develop an undoubted talent by giving him more game time (and higher wages), or let him go to Bayern Munich, as he has indicated he'd like to, to guarantee that game time. "Too much, too young", as The Specials sang, is a valid point, and I do have some sympathy for Sarri's view. But only some. As keeps coming up, in radio phone-ins and newspaper comment boxes, that old adage "if you're good enough, you're old enough" does count. Gareth Southgate might be even making a point to Chelsea's head coach that there is no time like the present. I certainly don't disagree.

It's a pity history didn't repeat itself

It was less than a hour after the final whistle at Goodison Park, in a match that Chelsea lost by a single goal away to Everton, that one of the greatest managers football has ever produced was brutally sacked. Some close to Carlo Ancelotti say he’d been expecting it, but that doesn’t diminish the ruthlessness with which then-Chelsea chief executive Ron Gourlay informed the Italian he was out, in the away team dressing room.

This was the Italian coach who’d won the league and cup double in his first season at Chelsea, who’d brought with him to West London an incredible pedigree from Italy, with scudetti and myriad other silverware during his spells at AC Milan and Juventus. Ancelotti had, it is said, even been seen as the model manager in Roman Abramovich’s eyes, given that he’d regarded the rossoneri as the template for Chelsea, stylish, successful in Europe. And yet, despite winning the Premier League and the FA Cup in his first season at Chelsea, Ancelotti was summarily fired on the final day of the domestic season - for simply guiding the club to second place. By the same token, then, you have expected history to have repeated itself yesterday at Goodison Park. A frankly pathetic Chelsea squandered a second successive league game in hand to remain in sixth place with only the momentum of their Europa League run keeping them in with a chance of playing in the Champions League next season.

I can't, then, be the only one obsessively checking Twitter yesterday evening, or hitting refresh on the BBC Sport home page today, expecting the headline "CHELSEA SACKS SARRI" (and the obligatory tabloid splash, "WHO'S SARRI NOW?". "Clueless Sarri," as The Sun branded him today surely must be reaching the end of the line. Surely, now, it's a case of 'when', not 'if'? I've tried to be sympathetic to Sarri, that implementing his philosophy must take longer than the eight months he's been at the club. And, to offer some benevolence, until the previous Sunday's frustrating draw with Wolves, we’d been beginning to think that Sarri had turned a corner, prompted by that Carabao Cup final when, even what seemed like a predictable team selection (Hazard as a false 9, etc) turned out to be inspiring, defensively frustrating a free scoring Manchester City and pushing them to a 0-0 scoreline after 120 minutes. Even the ridiculous “misunderstanding” with Kepa Arrizabalaga won Sarri extra respect. Momentum in the Europa League, too, has carried positives, as crowd-pleasing and rare appearances (and goals) from 18-year-old Callum Hudson-Odoi, plus better all-round team performances, have given fans the hope that the Champions League next season is a real possibility.

But despite that apparent European momentum, the sharp focus remains on Chelsea in the Premier League, and here Sarri seems to be going down the Antonio Conte route of talking himself out of a job. "I don't know [what happened]," he told Sky Sports after the Everton defeat yesterday. "The players don't know what happened and at the moment I can't explain the change. We played, in my opinion, the best first half of the season and we could have scored four or five times and then suddenly we stopped playing. It is very strange. We stopped to defend and to counter-attack, everything. [We became] another team, I don't know."

Well, if he doesn't know, then who does? Over the last few weeks, as disappointment has given way to underachievement, Sarri has fallen back on his player's mindset, and thus he did the same yesterday: "I think the problem was mental," he told Sky, "so if you have a mental problem suddenly on the pitch the system and the tactics are not enough." This is just not good enough. I rarely support the notion that it begins and ends with the manager, and in most cases where a manager gets sacked, the players should absorb plenty of the blame. But there's something seriously lacking in the motivation department for Chelsea to play as resiliently as they did in the first half against Everton yesterday, and then, defensively, look like puppets with their strings cut in the second half. Not even the replacement of the poor Higuain with Giroud, and the introduction of Ruben Loftus-Cheek and Hudson-Odoi to bolster the attack could compensate for how poor Chelsea were at the back. There may be individual failings, but the manager trains the team and prepares them for matchday, and should select the most effective and motivated combination of players. Sarri's team were anything but in the second half. Which brings the blame game back on Sarri himself.

Given the history of premature, in-season departures of predecessors at Chelsea who failed to come up to expectations, Sarri has probably been under a stay of execution. Perhaps, though, it’s not that much of a mystery as to why he remains: Marina Granovskaia, the defacto Chelsea chief executive, placed a heavy bet on bringing Sarri and Sarri-ball to Chelsea. Abramovich presumably gave his blessing, but the Chelsea owner has been largely invisible over the last few months as he wrangles with the British government over his visa. It's hard, though, to imagine that the Chelsea hierarchy - in whatever amorphous form it currently takes - hasn't or isn't considering a replacement for Sarri. With a two-week international break, it even has the opportunity to bundle the Italian out and get in someone else without too much disruption to either the club's domestic or European programme. The question, of course, is who: Zinedine Zidane is now off the market, Massimiliano Allegri is unlikely to want the job, and Frank Lampard is only in his first season at Derby County. There's the possibility of John Terry, of course, perhaps with former Chelsea assistant coach Steve Holland being prised away from the England set-up. Or the club dives once again into its directory of Italian managers looking for an out.

Whatever happens, it is becoming clear that whatever Sarri has been trying to achieve at Chelsea is not working. Sky Sports have been reporting "sources" as saying that Sarri's future is now, finally, under evaluation by the club's hierarchy. That should have some bearing on Granovskaia herself for placing such a huge bet on the 60-year-old, but if there's one other thing the hierarchy should be evaluating, its why Chelsea should be looking at yet another season in which it jettisons its head coach not much longer after he arrived.

To sleep, perchance to dream

Picture: Royal Philips

If there was one commodity, one seemingly luxury item, I could guarantee myself every single day of the week it would be a good night's sleep. But, as I progress through the novice slopes of my 50s, a night where I'm out at 11 and awake again next morning, unbroken, appears as elusive as a sane resolution to Brexit.

I can, so my girlfriend attests, go to sleep quite quickly after head hits pillow, but it is rarely the last movement before waking again at the preferred hour. Not wishing to take things too far into unpleasantness, there is usually at least one trip to the smallest room in the house, before returning to, apparently, slumber. Travel isn’t helping. By the end of this month I will have travelled to Barcelona, Madrid, Stockholm, Amsterdam, Rome, Zurich, Milan and Lausanne (having dodged brief visits - and long flights - to Tel Aviv and Dubai), with individual overnight hotel stays in each city. Sounds luxurious (and in the case of Barcelona, possibly the best hotel bed I’ve ever had the pleasure to snuggle up in), but, alas, not a solid night's sleep in any. No matter how Egyptian the cotton, or how high the thread count, I just can’t relax. Travel weariness might catch up with me, conking me out for an hour or two at a time, but I’m too easily awake, briefly, searching for the optimum sleeping position (a choice of: 1. on my right flank; 2. my back; or 3. my left flank). It's not insomnia per se, just a lack of proper, deep, uninterrupted, out-for-the-count, lost-in-the-depths-of-Bedfordshire, giving it the full Z, sleep. Over-the-counter sleep aids bought easily in American supermarkets don’t seem to help, either, even contributing to the frustration of sleeplessness by being ineffective. You just lie there thinking about the pills you’ve taken, rather than being blissfully asleep.

So, in this month of almost perpetual takeoffs and landings, check-ins and check-outs, and a generally disturbed pattern to my nocturnal doings, it’s somewhat ironic that today should be World Sleep Day. Yep, there's one of them, too (though I have to confess that I’m a little more excited about Record Store Day next month). To mark this day-of-days, my former employer, Philips - which is less about consumer electronics, these days, than healthcare - has published the findings of a global study into sleeping habits, and not of the usual "he hogs the duvet/she takes up too much of the bed” kind.

Surveying adults in 12 countries to see how they feel about sleep, the results come worryingly close to my own sleep issues, showing that people are increasingly concerned about the impact on their health caused by poor sleep, but also their frustrations at the pursuit of a quality night's kip. Though not giving an immediate explanation for the finding, Philips reports that 44% of adults say their sleep has worsened in the last five years. The obvious culprit may well be the use of smartphones and tablets close to lights-out, a point of blame recently cited as the reason for sleep issues amongst teenagers, due to the blue light such devices emit which strongly inhibits the production of the sleep hormone melatonin. Addiction to such devices isn't, however, limited to teenagers.

Getting off to sleep is one thing, but the quality - and therefore, restorative effects of good sleep is another thing. Eight out of ten adults would like to improve their sleep, according to the Philips study, with 77% recognising that sleep has an enormous impact on general health, including a growing awareness of chronic sleep problems and sleep deprivation and a high correlation to medical conditions such as depression, obesity, diabetes, heart disease, stroke, neurocognitive disease and even cancer. More than three-quarters of those surveyed said that at least one recognisable condition impacted their sleep, be it insomnia (37%) or snoring (29%).

So, as my month of almost perpetual motion continues, I'll try and apply these top tips from New York-based sleep therapist Dr. Ross Levin: 

• Limit alcohol consumption.
• Give yourself at least an hour to wind down before going to bed.
• Disconnect from electronics and keep them out of the bedroom.
• Keep regular sleep/rise times within an hour day to day.
• Never cancel social/work obligations in anticipation of staying up late.
• Keep a sleep diary.
• Get morning sunlight.
• What you think about during the day affects how you sleep at night.
• Try not to obsess about your sleep – people who don’t sleep well think about sleep all day long. People without sleep problems just go to sleep.
• Talk to your doctor if you’re concerned about a sleep disorder.

Night-night.