Sarrild be just the latest sitting cou duck manager at Stamford Bridge
ILOOK at the Chelsea squad and ask myself are they just a bunch of immature big kids who are indicative of the modern day player and their attitude to the game, the club and their manager?
Because if that is the case, Chelsea only have themselves to blame. The club and owner Roman Abramovich have created an environment which protects the players, not the coach or first team manager.
And if they can sack Jose Mourinho and Antonio Conte a year after winning the title, the players know they can get rid of anybody.
Chelsea’s record over the last five or six years can be simplified – play well, win the title and then virtually down tools the following season because they don’t like the manager any more.
In Maurizio Sarri’s first season, Chelsea are actually managing to condense all those seasons into one. They were unbeaten until November 24, were awful and inconsistent over the Christmas period, Sarri’s position has been questioned, though they have just reached the League Cup Final.
Since the dreadful surrender at Arsenal last week, Sarri has been questioning the attitude of the Chelsea players and insinuated that they are hard to motivate.
But Chelsea have created an environment where the players know that if it is not quite working for their manager, then the club will just get rid of him. And of course the players are more than aware of this.
Clearly the relationships between the players and the last two managers, Mourinho and Conte broke down and the two men have to accept some responsibility for that.
Sarri obviously knows the situation he has inherited at Stamford Bridge. And the Italian coach seems to have accepted his role at Chelsea and, having seen Mourinho and Conte fall under the policy, he knows will not change it. He knows he is not going to have the final say in signings or the dayto-day running of the club. His remit is to sort the team out.
While Sarri seems quite happy to accept that job description, he is clearly not impressed with the way some of his players have approached the last couple of months and he wanted a reaction after the defeat to Arsenal.
They were unlucky to lose to Spurs in the first leg of the League Cup semi-final and deserved to go through on penalties on Thursday.
It is strange that a manager of a top level club will have no real say in their signings because he surely needs to understand the personality of the players he will be working with on a daily basis.
That makes the signing of Gonzalo Higuain very interesting because Sarri knows how to play to his strengths. He is certainly an upgrade on Alvaro Morata and Olivier Giroud. The big question is over his fitness.
Higuain is the fifth highest scorer in the top five leagues in Europe since 2005/06 with 224 goals in 382 games, and only Lionel Messi has a better strike-rate. He scored a Serie A record 36 goals for Napoli three seasons ago, and while he was not scoring at the same rate he enjoyed then, he still netted eight goals for AC Milan this season.
But he has had his weight and fitness issues and he will need to be at his sharpest in the Premier League, especially under Sarri’s command. If he is fit, he will score goals but I would love to have seen him in the Premier League three or four years ago.
His arrival also frees up Eden Hazard, if they can keep hold of him in this window, as there have been whispers from his camp. With Hazard, Willian, Pedro and Ross Barkley there is enough talent to create chances for Higuain.
This was always going to be a challenging season for Chelsea’s players and their new manager.
He is very demanding and anyone who saw Napoli last season would have witnessed really high tempo football at its best. They should have won the league last year but actually blew it.
That might have been down to tiredness, or switching off after they beat Juventus late in the season but it is hard to replicate the intensity Sarri demands every week. I never had a problem with that intensity but there does come a time when players start to feel it and that may explain the drop in Chelsea’s performances.