Sarri-ball has not deflated ... it has exploded in his face
MANCHESTER City already had six good reasons to believe they would end Chelsea’s interest in domestic competitions at Wembley on Sunday and now they have two more.
If the 6-0 hiding City administered to Chelsea in the Premier League two weeks ago wasn’t evidence enough of plummeting morale at Stamford Bridge, then their neighbours Manchester United put a big red circle around the subject here.
City will surely beat Maurizio Sarri’s Chelsea team in the Carabao Cup final on Sunday. It already looks the safest of bets. Sarri-ball — whatever it was in the first place — has not so much deflated as exploded in the face of the Chelsea coach.
After another dispiriting night for the Italian’s team, there seems no way back for him at Chelsea. on another very good evening for ole Gunnar Solskjaer’s United, Sarri’s players failed him and supporters barracked him.
The Chelsea fans howled in derision at the predictability of their manager’s substitutions and heckled his style of play.
At a club traditionally short on patience, they are tiring of their manager before winter is even over. From the optimism of early season — when Sarri’s football seemed brave rather than self-indulgently inflexible — it has been an astonishingly rapid decline.
Confidence is everything in sport, of course, and undoubtedly Chelsea are suffering. That can happen. Had they scored first here this game could have been different. They were arguably marginally
the better team until Ander Herrera scored the first goal.
But this group of Chelsea players are not known for their resilience. They are either good or they are bad and rarely anything in between. A chunk of them won a title for Antonio Conte, then failed him as soon as the going got heavier the following season. Jose Mourinho could tell a similar story.
Sadly for Sarri, the towel seems to have been thrown in a little sooner. It is not that Chelsea are not trying. It is never that clear- cut. But the small details that so often make the difference at this level are no longer in Sarri’s favour.
One goal looked enough as soon as it went in for United and that was telling. The game — in theory at least — was still there to be won for Chelsea, but it never felt like that. They have so little cohesion that it is startling and Sarri does not help himself with the intransigence of his selections and his pronouncements. The contrast with what Solskjaer has done at United is clear.
A loss to Paris Saint-Germain in the Champions League last week hasn’t troubled United much. They have now won at Arsenal and Chelsea in the FA Cup and that speaks volumes for their direction. United are not the best team in the world, not by a distance. PSG reminded us of that. But they are no longer muddled.
Solskjaer is clear in his selections and his tactics. Sarri, meanwhile, refuses to deviate from policies that are no longer working and for a coach that is always very dangerous. There is much about Chelsea that is still confusing, not least the deployment of N’Golo Kante and Jorginho. Early in the season, with Chelsea playing well and winning matches, deploying Jorginho in Kante’s former position at the base of the midfield was explained away by pointing at the Premier League table.
Now it is not so easy and currently the whole thing just looks a little baffling. For Kante, a World Cup winner and two- time Premier League champion, to play out of position is impossible to explain on nights like this.
The Frenchman was occasionally dangerous with his scampering runs down the inside right channel. He can trouble defenders. Further back, though, Jorginho was drowning a little, too often out-thought by Herrera’s hungry dynamism.
THErE is a cleverness about Herrera that sometimes goes unnoticed. He gets under the skin of opponents. Here he was busy both with and without the ball and was the best player on the field even before he scored.
Chelsea needed a bounce to go their way, a bit of luck. But it didn’t happen and in the shape of their new centre forward Gonzalo Higuain, they didn’t have the focal point that he was brought to the club to provide.
It is hard to believe this is a team who didn’t lose a meaningful match until the end of November. That defeat was by Tottenham and, once Sunday’s final against City is done, their London rivals are next up in the Premier League.
Could Tottenham finish off Sarri? It doesn’t sound like the daftest suggestion in the world.