Time Sarri let Kante do what he does best

Chelsea beat liverpool on Wednesday night, so maybe Maurizio sarri won’t see reason to change, but there was no Mohamed salah until the 87th minute and sadio Mane and Roberto Firmino were not on the pitch at the same time. so, while most certainly it was a team in red that lost, it wasn’t the one that will visit stamford Bridge tomorrow. The team with the last remaining 100 per cent record in english league football. so what sarri does next with N’Golo Kante is interesting. Does he continue pushing him forward, ahead of the play, while Jorginho orchestrates, or does he restore him to the role for which he was born — the guard, the shield, sensing danger and using his phenomenal athleticism to snuff it out. Roughly 71 per cent of the earth’s surface is covered by water, ran the old joke. The rest is covered by N’Golo Kante. Yet since sarri has arrived, he hasn’t wanted what Kante does best. he plays every week but in unfamiliar areas. at West ham last weekend he found himself near the right by-line late in the game, attempting to cross. he made two attacking headers in the West ham penalty area in the first half. Only when West ham made a counter-attacking break aimed at the lively Felipe anderson and Kante (below) effortlessly chased him down — there was only ever going to be one winner — did we see the player we recall from consecutive titles at leicester and Chelsea. ‘Footballing vandalism,’ the respected sportswriter and broadcaster Richard Williams called it. Kante at inside right, often with his back to goal, Jorginho in his place. We know why sarri does it. Jorginho is his man, the player who makes his system tick, specifically imported from Napoli for this purpose. against West ham, Jorginho set a record for the most passes made by a player in a Premier league match. Yet Chelsea barely looked like scoring, so what does that mean? Jorginho is a lovely footballer and keeps Chelsea ticking over, no doubt at sarri’s preferred speed, but the coach has sacrificed the greatness of Kante. he has moved him to a position where he is quite useful, from one in which he was the best in the world. Chelsea have been lightly raced in the league to here. huddersfield, Newcastle, Bournemouth, Cardiff and West ham are not teams against which they will be judged. Chelsea beat arsenal, but it was second game in and Unai emery’s transformation was in its infancy. even then it was close and took a goal in the 81st minute to seal victory. liverpool at full strength, however, is different. even at home, Chelsea might need belt and braces in midfield in a way they have not before. Will sarri adjust and place Kante beside Jorginho, matching liverpool’s central energy with some of his own? Or will he persevere with Kante’s new role, as an inside right who runs a bit? The trend for modern coaches is to bend the team to their will. It has worked for sarri so far, but they haven’t faced opponents like liverpool yet. Not even at anfield two nights ago. ALSO down with the kids this week, the RFU. After launching the latest England shirt s — it’s white, like all the others, but you really, r really need it — the official Instagram account instructed: ‘Follow the link in our bio to get your s***.’ Irredeemably desperate, of course. But never a truer word spoken. GReaT BRITaIN may not be particularly good at tennis but they bring fans and noise, and probably thirst, so in the skewed world of modern sport, that’s just as important. Meaning Great Britain have already qualified for the new-look Davis Cup without having to suffer the burden of winning boring tennis matches. There will be 18 finalists in Madrid next year, with two hand-picked wild cards. argentina have also been chosen. Maybe the committee like steak.

‘We looked at things like the heritage of a nation in the Davis Cup,’ said David haggerty of the International Tennis Federation, a statement that may have come as a surprise to the United states and australia, who have taken the trophy 44 times in the period when Great Britain have won it once. Then haggerty clarified. ‘are the fans engaged,’ he added, ‘do the fans travel?’ Oh, so it’s a drinking competition. Fair enough. It used to be tennis.