ROY FEARED GOALS BLITZ
MAURIZIO SARRI has urged his English youngsters to learn from N’Golo Kante after the remodelled Frenchman set a new personal goals record for a season.
The World Cup-winner has been shunted from his usual anchor role to a more attacking position under the Italian coach.
And yesterday the former Leicester City star lit up this dull game with the 51st-minute winner after a perfect pass from David Luiz.
“It’s a move I’ve tried in training,” revealed the ever-modest Kante. “It doesn’t work many times but David gave me a good ball and I’m happy to score with my left foot and help the team win. It was all about the pass.”
It was Kante’s third goal of the season – his highest total in a top league – after signing a new five-year deal last month.
Sarri, who prefers his £57million summer signing Jorginho to screen the defence, was pleased with Kante’s conversion into an attacking threat.
He now wants Ruben Loftus-Cheek – who was out with a back injury
yesterday – and Ross Barkley to copy his example. “N’Golo is improving, especially his movement without the ball,” said Sarri.
“Today the movement was really very good and done at the right time.
“It’s very important for us when we have to play against opponents very low, where the strikers and wingers find it hard to find space. It’s about the movement of the midfielders.
“We have to work on Loftus and Barkley on this. Loftus, especially, is a very great player with the ball, but he can improve a lot in his movement without the ball.”
Chelsea hit the woodwork twice in three first-half minutes through a Willian free-kick and a Barkley overhead kick. But with Eden Hazard (above) having an off day, they needed something special from Kante to maintain their drive towards a return to the Champions League.
“I think we played very well for 85 minutes,” added the former Napoli coach. “We were in full control of the match. But we didn’t kill the match and so, for us, it was very difficult to defend in the box in the last five minutes.
“We haven’t very good physical impact, so we were in trouble in the box. But for 85 minutes we were in full control without conceding anything. The only thing I didn’t like was we weren’t able to kill off the match before.”
Ridiculously, Palace could have stolen a point despite not having first shot until the 85th minute when Wilf Zaha fired over. Sub Conor Wickham then wasted an even better chance.
The win sees Chelsea open a five-point gap over Arsenal in fifth – and moves them to within two points of Tottenham.
Sarri arrived with a reputation for playing entertaining football but the Blues side are grinding out the results.
They have won three consecutive away league games for the first time under him – and won four of their last five matches by a single goal.
Sarri added: “We now need continuity because in the last five matches we played very well in three, and badly in two, so now is the moment to have continuity.” ROY HODGSON claimed Crystal Palace would have lost “by four or five goals” had they been more positive against Chelsea.
After 31 shots in the draw with Cardiff, they did not get a single effort on target in a dire display. Palace, who stunned Manchester City at the Etihad before Christmas, have only five goals from 10 home league games.
Asked if they could have been more adventurous, Hodgson said: “If we wanted to be get beat by four or five goals to nil then possibly, yes. They were very, very good. Our first half was disciplined and focused, and we limited their scoring chances. We did quite well. “When they scored there were two possibilities. We were not able to get the ball from them and you can open yourselves up for 40 minutes and see them exploit the space or try to do what we did. “That is, keep the game tight and under some sort of control until maybe 20 minutes from then, and then hope to take your chances.”