Dorset

Act 1 - Huddersfield
As scene-setters go this one told us very little about the Sarri-ball play in general and even less about the plot, the home team offering no more than token resistance and allowing Jorginho to take centre stage and steal the entire show. If Chelsea fans learnt anything at all regarding the coming season as a whole and how it will unfold it was that this late acquisition from Napoli is going to be an integral part of it and we had better get used to seeing him constantly on the ball over ninety minutes, passing more times than it was ever thought humanly possible before his arrival. Indeed, such is his overiding importance N'Golo Kante has had to change role, our steam-driven engine room now futher forward and distinctly fresh air and open plan in outlook. Like it or not (still not sure either way) both players scored and Sarri has deemed the switch necessary, thereby emphasising an uncompromising need to accommodate Jorginho at all cost.
In other Huddersfield news, Sarri's 4-3-3 appeared slower to slip into gear than most optimists anticipated while Alvaro Morata struggled to link up with his team-mates, as most pessimists predicted. He often cut an isolated figure in the final third, but if you are an Alvaro fan this could conceivably be put down to rustiness whereas, if you're not and set in your ways, well, he's rubbish and the sooner Giroud hits the ground trundling the better. So, apart from these two continuing debates and Sarri plumping for Pedro and Barkley in supporting roles, that was about it from the northern outpost, with those soothsayers who thought that the Arsenal game would reveal a great deal more than this lame yorkie capitulation soon to be proved correct.
Act 2 - Arsenal
Even if we were to emerge from the eargerly anticipated London derby a little less sure of ourselves and still pretty much in the dark as to how streamlined Sarri-ball can actually become, the game itself had absolutely everything, However, despite taking all 3 points it was impossible not to feel anything other than a sense of relief at the final whistle. It was therefore fit and proper that Sarri, much to his credit and in circumstances where he could easily have lapsed into full-on Jose smug mode, to dissect the rollacoaster ride of a match in this insightful summation:-
“We have to improve in the defensive phase and I’m not talking about only the defenders. I mean the defensive phase of all the team, all the players. If we press very high, we are able to do well. But when we are not able to press in the other half, we are in trouble. We did very well for 75 minutes of the 90. Inside there were 15 horrible minutes. We lost distances, we were not able to press.”
Heart on sleeve honesty from the boss when for many it was just happy days, maximum points, sticking it to a London rival,what could possibly be better than that for even the most cynical glass half-full Shed Ender? Well, truth be told, nagging doubts still existed in many a Chels fan's mind and here was the inventor in his match confessional giving a brief of glimpse of the Sarri-ball highs and lows that will inevitably be a feature this season. His quote says it all and his actions on the touchline at the time, those frantic gestures to advance as a two goal cushion disappeared, suddenly became an awful lot clearer to fans who might otherwise have thought that he was recklessly directing his troops to go over the top, like some gungho First World War general urging his men on by means of a brief and dramatically chorographed appearance from the safety of his heavily sandbagged, smoke-filled dugout.
No, this was certainly not one of those into-the-valley-of-death moments but more a for-christ-sake-close-ranks plea that spoke volumes to both the uninitiated supporters and those on the pitch who had been vigorously drilled in a defensive art and had suddenly forgotten how to carry out the practice without dropping their rifles all over the place. Two goals up, pressure eased, did Sarri detect a slight deleliction of duty in the ranks, specifically the back four? You bet your sweet Sky sponsorship life he did! Yet defensively, this is not about the debunking of basic Sarriball principles,his shutting down of passing lanes centrally and the forcing of opponents wide, but all about distances. As he was quick to point out, losing focus on distances meant we were not able to press properly and whenever a midfielder or a winger stepped up [to force the press] even though the shape was always the required perfect 4-4-2, the space in between was too wide for the whole process to be effective.
Moreover, when it failed, that space was filled with Arsenal midfielders, the ball played out wide, and the subsequent pullbacks cut us to ribbons. Yet for the first quarter our attacking counter-press worked a treat, so where did it all go wrong in the second and why did it take a halftime team talk refresher course to put it right? The answer to the first part lies in those two telling words 'lost distances' and I believe the reason for the second is that the inexperience of our back four, together with a certain amount of complacency brought on by that early two goal advantage, led to the midfield space stretching from an acceptable and manageable 15 metres into a gap almost double the size. Quite simply, Arsenal's players suddenly had room to move. Add to this the fact that, three men or four, Kante is no longer our gatekeeper for the defence and you have a plausible and hopefully repairable cause for what might otherwise be regarded as a serious spanner in the Sarri-ball works. Still, it is good to know that spanner isn't David Luis or Tony Rudiger, nor on this occasion was it anything to do with faulty full backs. But, that said...
Act 3 - Newcastle
Unsurprisingly and unhelpfully (another Arse-type approach would have tested metal as opposed to merely tempering it) Benitez posed a totally different set of problems for Sarri-ball to solve. Sarri-ball versus sorry-ball (to quote Henry Winter of The Times) and this time the space might as well have been as wide as the Spanish waiter's midriff because it was never going to be occupied by Geordie hoardes who were otherwise engaged in keeping a strict 5-4-1 formation intact and in their own half for as long as it took to stop us scoring and ruin the game as a spectacle. In such circumstances space was not a concern, although pace obviously was and no matter how much Hazard magic survived the [unpunished] buffeting it got we conjured up precious little of it to break through the lowest of low blocks and somehow (Geezer on his heels) even managed to concede an equaliser that could have been so costly, but ultimately only provided the stat of the day - Joselu's goal was Newcastle's first on target since the sixth minute and their only shot on target in the second half!! So much for the Geordies being described (on Sky) as 'unfortunate' not to pick up a point.
Still, never mind, defensive aberations and burrowing through low blocks can be remedied in the fullness of time... about a month or so Sarri informed the media and then, once up to speed, there should be no stopping us. In the meantime Bournemouth would provide further opportunity to measure Sarri-ball in a toe-to-toe contest against another footballing side, or at least that was the script we expected to follow...
Act 4 – Bournemouth
… sadly, it was to be rewritten for the Cherries by Eddie Howe, no doubt to prevent them from becoming, for want of a better phrase, easy pickings. Chelsea had 81 per cent possession in their previous game against Newcastle and it was a similar story as Bournemouth decided to go defensive by ditching their back four principles in favour of a three and compromised even further by making it a five at the first sign of pressure, of which there was plenty. The result, other than being a hard fought 2-0 win, was probaly best summed up by a single statistic - Chelsea had exactly 24 shots in both of their Premier League home games. Little wonder, then, that eventually the Howe Blues Plan failed and, like the Python's Norwegian Blue parrot, it ended up not fooling anybody, not just sleeping, just dead from the 72nd minute onwards. Again, Sarri summed things up perfectly:-
"This kind of match usually you can win in the last 20-25 minutes. The match was very difficult against a very organised team. They defended very aggressively and the situation was not so easy."
All very gracious, but I'm guessing that Maurizio is looking forward in the future to much stiffer Sarri-ball examinations than this turned out to be, when any ghosts in his machine loom larger and are either busted or end up busting us. Another example of the [as yet] unknowns that make this season such a fascinating one was touched upon by Chelsea TV's Ben Andrews during commentary when he confessed to Jason Cundy, during a lull in the play shortly after Hazard had sewn the game up, that he was still none the wiser as to whether Kepa was a good goalkeeper or not. Not a clue, because he has hardly had a save or a sweeper-keeper manoeurve to make.
Sarri must feel the same about that cliché otherwise known as the last piece of the midfield jigsaw. Is it to be Kovacic, Barkley or Loftus-Cheek? These are the questions the boss must be asking himself four games in, while up front it certainly would not have escaped the been-there-done-that expert attacking eye of Giafranco Zola that (Hazard apart) we lack a world class goal poacher capable of tucking away chances on a regular basis. The goals have tended to arrive when Giroud comes on, but he is our impact player and if Morata does not find form soon and the back of the net consistently there has to be a Sarri-ball accommodating argument in favour of Hazard playing as a false nine at some stage in proceedings.
Finally, no review would be complete without a selection of Sarri-ball pros and cons over this shortest of four-game courses, so here are mine, together with a couple of outside bets to make a breakthrough:-
The Pros:-
Marcus Alonso - dynamic and a major Sarri-ball surprise, but his defending still needs working on.
Mateo Kovacic - could be the perfect foil for Kante.
Pedro - taken to Sarri-ball like a duck to water.
The Cons:-
David Luiz - some teams have a back four player who is the glue that holds everything together, Geezer is a marmite equivalent and you either love or hate the cavalier talent he brings to the party.
Alvaro Morata - Sarri-ball is all about pace going forward and he must learn to play better on the half-turn to achieve this or his days will be numbered.
N'Golo Kante - not really a 'con' in the truest sense here, but there can be no question that what we have gained on the swings of his newly-acquired attacking play we have lost on the roundabouts when it comes to his covering in defence.
Potential Breakthroughs;-
Ethan Ampadu - pure guesswork, maybe, but I wont be surprised if he emerges as either the cover for Luiz in the Europa League games or challenges for that last piece jigsaw place in midfield.
Callum Hudson-Odoi – and if Ethan was guesswork Callum must really be wishful thinking on my part, but Sarri has already been very complimentary about the kid, the Europa League will be a showcase and I'm backing him to be, at the very least, back on the first team bench regularly by Christmas at the latest.

 

Ho hum... another day, another English Football International Break. Two weeks worth to be precise, but not for me Clive, because it's no exaggeration to say that boredom set in early doors and long before England crossed swords with Croatia, yet again. Still, at least the latest of my fortnightly cravings for Chels-related stuff has been somewhat satiated by the guff written about Messrs Barkley, Mount and Loftus-Cheek. Nothing like an unsubstantiated Media gab fest to keep us fans in the paranoid state we have become accustomed to and have been accused of being in since Roman times and the Academy Empire was first built. Fast forward a decade and around this time in 2014 pre-World Cup any impartial punters would probably have glanced at this triumvirate of names and judged them to be a firm of solicitors. But not now, not post-WC 2018, not with the hype surrounding Chels-acquisition Ross Barkley, Chels-stagnating-at-Vitesse-loanee Mason Mount and Chels-wantaway-to-be-a-loanee-again Ruben Loftus-Cheek,.all of whom just happen to be vying for a place in an England team that at the moment is as much in need of a midfield superstar as it is a meaningful fixture.
Don't get me wrong, if any of these three had actually starred on that foreign field in front of anything resembling a live audience (FA officials do not count) I would have been the first to shout it from my hilltop, let alone a Croatian one. But they didn't, as only Ross made it to the starting line-up and even though he didn't play badly every expectant midfield hopeful, along with the already ego-bruised Marcus Rashford, must now be prepared to play second fiddle to the new publicity bandwagon that can't wait to churn out Jadon Sancho Ragtime. But such is life for the so-called potential young International stars of the future and ours can still fight for the creative role in the England side, albeit as contenders hamstrung by association with their parent club and the drip-fed media-fostered notion that Chelsea's youth development system has always been a hinderance rather than a help.
Indeed, it seems the club still cannot avoid flack even in the most encouraging of circumstances. For instance, I find it quite bizarre that critics expect us to buy into the idea that Ruben Loftus-Cheek's progression into the England team and an appearance at the World Cup is anything other than a great success story. Okay, he may well have to battle for his place in the side with Mason Mount in the years ahead, but this says more about the way Chelsea have developed these players than it does about any perceived deficiencies in our Academy system. Another moot point concerns Man City's Phil Foden and Gareth Southgate's recent comment that he has less experience than Mason Mount, an advantage gained at Vitesse, a club that became the butt of many a joke made by rival fans and pundits alike who see their first team squad as the archetypal graveyard for Chelsea loanees. How ironic is that, especially when you hear the England manager refering (indirectly) to this loan as the main reason for Mount moving ahead of Foden in the International midfield pecking order.
And so, belatedly and after years of fake news, we come to the real truth of the matter, which has at last been openly admitted to by one daily newspaper (The Guardian) in an article reviewing young talent worldwide and accentuated in the following quote:-
“Mason Mount has become the latest poster boy of Chelsea’s academy, which draws plenty of cynicism but has helped develop 19 of the 128 players picked for England’s representative sides from under 17s to seniors in this international window. No club can match that, whether those kids go on to play for Chelsea or elsewhere.”
Nuff said you would think, yet sadly this sudden media epithany arrives at a time when even the most diehard Chels believers in a breakthrough coming at the Bridge are starting to doubt it will ever happen, the catalyst being what looks very much like Maurizio Sarri's cold-shouldering of Callum Hudson-Odoi. Why no appearance in the Europa League or even a cameo in the Carabao Cup? Keeping CHO happy should be of paramount importance at both playing and boardroom level, but it appears there is little appetite for appeasing any youngster with a growing reputation who 'arrives' only to shift restlessly on the bench for a game or two and then disappear from view altogether. We can only hope that the plan for Callum has yet to unfold and is currently wedged firmly in Sarri's back pocket while Hazard performs his miracles and Willian, Pedro and Moses provide backup. Normally, with a first team undefeated and well in contention for the title, this policy would brook no argument, but where is the forward-thinking when you consider Hazard's contractual state and status, Real Madrid's interest in him and the fact that the other three are not getting any younger and will never fill his boots abilitywise anyway.
That isn't to say CHO is bolted on as Hazard's natural successor, but he is the closest we've got in terms of potential and by now he should be a lot nearer to achieving full recognition than he seems to be. Moreover, if he can be likened to anyone in the England young gun armoury at present it has to be Jadon Sancho, both flair players who buck the typically English playing trend in so many ways, but the last thing we would want is for Callum to buck it further by copying Sancho's brave Euro route to the top. Truth be told, the more he is ignored the more obvious it becomes that he has no natural home in any of our Development Squads, having outgrown them quicker than any of his predecessors, and if he doesn't fit in the first team setup he doesn't really fit in at all, no matter the pre-season game time he had, the impression he made and the amount of praise heaped upon him to date. The boss has a major problem here, the forerunner to it being RLC and Andreas Christensen's current unrest and their gentle rocking of our boat in what are otherwise seen as calm blue Premier League waters. Make no mistake, this will be nothing compared to the tsunami should Callum decide to seek pastures new.
Maurizio Sarri has been something of a magician for us so far this season, but, even though he's got the smokes, I'm not sure he has the mirrors to distract the critical gaze for too much longer when it comes to the kids and their first team opportunities. Introducing them with a flourish is one thing, putting them in a substitutes box and then making them disappear is another, but getting them to come back for the briefest of recognition cameos becomes as boring as an International break. Let's face it, an audience soon grows tired of seeing the same trick performed repeatedly and after a while begins to wonder what it is, if anything, these magiciian's assistants can actually do on the big stage.

“In February, FIFA president Gianni Infantino said "it is important to establish a few rules as a limitation of squad sizes or the number of players out on loan."
If the establishment of new rules was so important back in February why has nothing been done about it in the last nine months? And, perhaps even more to the point, what is it that is so wrong with a system that seemingly satisfies all parties? Sky Sports News tackled this issue yesterday, no doubt in advance of putting Sarri under the press conference spotlight today, and their reporter was quick to single out Chelsea as the main culprit and [would be] ultimate loser should action be taken. The general tone adopted was one of sage agreement with a FIFA president not previously noted for his wisdom, the outrageous analogy was then made with that of a landlord/tenant relationship, presumably where the nasty owner does nothing about squalid conditions whilst charging an extortionate rental in circumstances where there is no alternative but to pay. Of course, nothing could be farther from the truth when it comes to club/loanee agreements and it is difficult to see, in a situation where all sides apparently benefit and are happy with their lot, why limitation of squad sizes is such a necessity.
On the Guardian podcast yesterday Chelsea were cast in a similar role alongside Man City, as having a higher number of loanees is deemed to make 'the crime' that much worse, and even here Philippe Auclair got carried away as he told of how at these two clubs loanees had to accept a future in this environment or they 'were told to b****r off'. Yet surely part of the problem, as many pereceive it to be, is that far from telling these kids to b****r off, the more family-minded club keeps them on, thereby inflating the numbers, openly inviting criticism and frustrating those fans who simply can't see the point of hanging on to what they regard as dead wood. To my mind, having a ceiling of 8 loanees over the age of 21 will only serve to increase the b****red off brigade anyway, for no good reason, even though I appreciate that others believe the club should cut its losses rather than continue to provide a homely cushion to fall back on until a sale of the player can be made that suits all parties.

Act 1 - Huddersfield
As scene-setters go this one told us very little about the Sarri-ball play in general and even less about the plot, the home team offering no more than token resistance and allowing Jorginho to take centre stage and steal the entire show. If Chelsea fans learnt anything at all regarding the coming season as a whole and how it will unfold it was that this late acquisition from Napoli is going to be an integral part of it and we had better get used to seeing him constantly on the ball over ninety minutes, passing more times than it was ever thought humanly possible before his arrival. Indeed, such is his overiding importance N'Golo Kante has had to change role, our steam-driven engine room now futher forward and distinctly fresh air and open plan in outlook. Like it or not (still not sure either way) both players scored and Sarri has deemed the switch necessary, thereby emphasising an uncompromising need to accommodate Jorginho at all cost.
In other Huddersfield news, Sarri's 4-3-3 appeared slower to slip into gear than most optimists anticipated while Alvaro Morata struggled to link up with his team-mates, as most pessimists predicted. He often cut an isolated figure in the final third, but if you are an Alvaro fan this could conceivably be put down to rustiness whereas, if you're not and set in your ways, well, he's rubbish and the sooner Giroud hits the ground trundling the better. So, apart from these two continuing debates and Sarri plumping for Pedro and Barkley in supporting roles, that was about it from the northern outpost, with those soothsayers who thought that the Arsenal game would reveal a great deal more than this lame yorkie capitulation soon to be proved correct.
Act 2 - Arsenal
Even if we were to emerge from the eargerly anticipated London derby a little less sure of ourselves and still pretty much in the dark as to how streamlined Sarri-ball can actually become, the game itself had absolutely everything, However, despite taking all 3 points it was impossible not to feel anything other than a sense of relief at the final whistle. It was therefore fit and proper that Sarri, much to his credit and in circumstances where he could easily have lapsed into full-on Jose smug mode, to dissect the rollacoaster ride of a match in this insightful summation:-
“We have to improve in the defensive phase and I’m not talking about only the defenders. I mean the defensive phase of all the team, all the players. If we press very high, we are able to do well. But when we are not able to press in the other half, we are in trouble. We did very well for 75 minutes of the 90. Inside there were 15 horrible minutes. We lost distances, we were not able to press.”
Heart on sleeve honesty from the boss when for many it was just happy days, maximum points, sticking it to a London rival,what could possibly be better than that for even the most cynical glass half-full Shed Ender? Well, truth be told, nagging doubts still existed in many a Chels fan's mind and here was the inventor in his match confessional giving a brief of glimpse of the Sarri-ball highs and lows that will inevitably be a feature this season. His quote says it all and his actions on the touchline at the time, those frantic gestures to advance as a two goal cushion disappeared, suddenly became an awful lot clearer to fans who might otherwise have thought that he was recklessly directing his troops to go over the top, like some gungho First World War general urging his men on by means of a brief and dramatically chorographed appearance from the safety of his heavily sandbagged, smoke-filled dugout.
No, this was certainly not one of those into-the-valley-of-death moments but more a for-christ-sake-close-ranks plea that spoke volumes to both the uninitiated supporters and those on the pitch who had been vigorously drilled in a defensive art and had suddenly forgotten how to carry out the practice without dropping their rifles all over the place. Two goals up, pressure eased, did Sarri detect a slight deleliction of duty in the ranks, specifically the back four? You bet your sweet Sky sponsorship life he did! Yet defensively, this is not about the debunking of basic Sarriball principles,his shutting down of passing lanes centrally and the forcing of opponents wide, but all about distances. As he was quick to point out, losing focus on distances meant we were not able to press properly and whenever a midfielder or a winger stepped up [to force the press] even though the shape was always the required perfect 4-4-2, the space in between was too wide for the whole process to be effective.
Moreover, when it failed, that space was filled with Arsenal midfielders, the ball played out wide, and the subsequent pullbacks cut us to ribbons. Yet for the first quarter our attacking counter-press worked a treat, so where did it all go wrong in the second and why did it take a halftime team talk refresher course to put it right? The answer to the first part lies in those two telling words 'lost distances' and I believe the reason for the second is that the inexperience of our back four, together with a certain amount of complacency brought on by that early two goal advantage, led to the midfield space stretching from an acceptable and manageable 15 metres into a gap almost double the size. Quite simply, Arsenal's players suddenly had room to move. Add to this the fact that, three men or four, Kante is no longer our gatekeeper for the defence and you have a plausible and hopefully repairable cause for what might otherwise be regarded as a serious spanner in the Sarri-ball works. Still, it is good to know that spanner isn't David Luis or Tony Rudiger, nor on this occasion was it anything to do with faulty full backs. But, that said...
Act 3 - Newcastle
Unsurprisingly and unhelpfully (another Arse-type approach would have tested metal as opposed to merely tempering it) Benitez posed a totally different set of problems for Sarri-ball to solve. Sarri-ball versus sorry-ball (to quote Henry Winter of The Times) and this time the space might as well have been as wide as the Spanish waiter's midriff because it was never going to be occupied by Geordie hoardes who were otherwise engaged in keeping a strict 5-4-1 formation intact and in their own half for as long as it took to stop us scoring and ruin the game as a spectacle. In such circumstances space was not a concern, although pace obviously was and no matter how much Hazard magic survived the [unpunished] buffeting it got we conjured up precious little of it to break through the lowest of low blocks and somehow (Geezer on his heels) even managed to concede an equaliser that could have been so costly, but ultimately only provided the stat of the day - Joselu's goal was Newcastle's first on target since the sixth minute and their only shot on target in the second half!! So much for the Geordies being described (on Sky) as 'unfortunate' not to pick up a point.
Still, never mind, defensive aberations and burrowing through low blocks can be remedied in the fullness of time... about a month or so Sarri informed the media and then, once up to speed, there should be no stopping us. In the meantime Bournemouth would provide further opportunity to measure Sarri-ball in a toe-to-toe contest against another footballing side, or at least that was the script we expected to follow...
Act 4 – Bournemouth
… sadly, it was to be rewritten for the Cherries by Eddie Howe, no doubt to prevent them from becoming, for want of a better phrase, easy pickings. Chelsea had 81 per cent possession in their previous game against Newcastle and it was a similar story as Bournemouth decided to go defensive by ditching their back four principles in favour of a three and compromised even further by making it a five at the first sign of pressure, of which there was plenty. The result, other than being a hard fought 2-0 win, was probaly best summed up by a single statistic - Chelsea had exactly 24 shots in both of their Premier League home games. Little wonder, then, that eventually the Howe Blues Plan failed and, like the Python's Norwegian Blue parrot, it ended up not fooling anybody, not just sleeping, just dead from the 72nd minute onwards. Again, Sarri summed things up perfectly:-
"This kind of match usually you can win in the last 20-25 minutes. The match was very difficult against a very organised team. They defended very aggressively and the situation was not so easy."
All very gracious, but I'm guessing that Maurizio is looking forward in the future to much stiffer Sarri-ball examinations than this turned out to be, when any ghosts in his machine loom larger and are either busted or end up busting us. Another example of the [as yet] unknowns that make this season such a fascinating one was touched upon by Chelsea TV's Ben Andrews during commentary when he confessed to Jason Cundy, during a lull in the play shortly after Hazard had sewn the game up, that he was still none the wiser as to whether Kepa was a good goalkeeper or not. Not a clue, because he has hardly had a save or a sweeper-keeper manoeurve to make.
Sarri must feel the same about that cliché otherwise known as the last piece of the midfield jigsaw. Is it to be Kovacic, Barkley or Loftus-Cheek? These are the questions the boss must be asking himself four games in, while up front it certainly would not have escaped the been-there-done-that expert attacking eye of Giafranco Zola that (Hazard apart) we lack a world class goal poacher capable of tucking away chances on a regular basis. The goals have tended to arrive when Giroud comes on, but he is our impact player and if Morata does not find form soon and the back of the net consistently there has to be a Sarri-ball accommodating argument in favour of Hazard playing as a false nine at some stage in proceedings.
Finally, no review would be complete without a selection of Sarri-ball pros and cons over this shortest of four-game courses, so here are mine, together with a couple of outside bets to make a breakthrough:-
The Pros:-
Marcus Alonso - dynamic and a major Sarri-ball surprise, but his defending still needs working on.
Mateo Kovacic - could be the perfect foil for Kante.
Pedro - taken to Sarri-ball like a duck to water.
The Cons:-
David Luiz - some teams have a back four player who is the glue that holds everything together, Geezer is a marmite equivalent and you either love or hate the cavalier talent he brings to the party.
Alvaro Morata - Sarri-ball is all about pace going forward and he must learn to play better on the half-turn to achieve this or his days will be numbered.
N'Golo Kante - not really a 'con' in the truest sense here, but there can be no question that what we have gained on the swings of his newly-acquired attacking play we have lost on the roundabouts when it comes to his covering in defence.
Potential Breakthroughs;-
Ethan Ampadu - pure guesswork, maybe, but I wont be surprised if he emerges as either the cover for Luiz in the Europa League games or challenges for that last piece jigsaw place in midfield.
Callum Hudson-Odoi – and if Ethan was guesswork Callum must really be wishful thinking on my part, but Sarri has already been very complimentary about the kid, the Europa League will be a showcase and I'm backing him to be, at the very least, back on the first team bench regularly by Christmas at the latest.

 

Act 1 - Huddersfield
As scene-setters go this one told us very little about the Sarri-ball play in general and even less about the plot, the home team offering no more than token resistance and allowing Jorginho to take centre stage and steal the entire show. If Chelsea fans learnt anything at all regarding the coming season as a whole and how it will unfold it was that this late acquisition from Napoli is going to be an integral part of it and we had better get used to seeing him constantly on the ball over ninety minutes, passing more times than it was ever thought humanly possible before his arrival. Indeed, such is his overiding importance N'Golo Kante has had to change role, our steam-driven engine room now futher forward and distinctly fresh air and open plan in outlook. Like it or not (still not sure either way) both players scored and Sarri has deemed the switch necessary, thereby emphasising an uncompromising need to accommodate Jorginho at all cost.
In other Huddersfield news, Sarri's 4-3-3 appeared slower to slip into gear than most optimists anticipated while Alvaro Morata struggled to link up with his team-mates, as most pessimists predicted. He often cut an isolated figure in the final third, but if you are an Alvaro fan this could conceivably be put down to rustiness whereas, if you're not and set in your ways, well, he's rubbish and the sooner Giroud hits the ground trundling the better. So, apart from these two continuing debates and Sarri plumping for Pedro and Barkley in supporting roles, that was about it from the northern outpost, with those soothsayers who thought that the Arsenal game would reveal a great deal more than this lame yorkie capitulation soon to be proved correct.
Act 2 - Arsenal
Even if we were to emerge from the eargerly anticipated London derby a little less sure of ourselves and still pretty much in the dark as to how streamlined Sarri-ball can actually become, the game itself had absolutely everything, However, despite taking all 3 points it was impossible not to feel anything other than a sense of relief at the final whistle. It was therefore fit and proper that Sarri, much to his credit and in circumstances where he could easily have lapsed into full-on Jose smug mode, to dissect the rollacoaster ride of a match in this insightful summation:-
“We have to improve in the defensive phase and I’m not talking about only the defenders. I mean the defensive phase of all the team, all the players. If we press very high, we are able to do well. But when we are not able to press in the other half, we are in trouble. We did very well for 75 minutes of the 90. Inside there were 15 horrible minutes. We lost distances, we were not able to press.”
Heart on sleeve honesty from the boss when for many it was just happy days, maximum points, sticking it to a London rival,what could possibly be better than that for even the most cynical glass half-full Shed Ender? Well, truth be told, nagging doubts still existed in many a Chels fan's mind and here was the inventor in his match confessional giving a brief of glimpse of the Sarri-ball highs and lows that will inevitably be a feature this season. His quote says it all and his actions on the touchline at the time, those frantic gestures to advance as a two goal cushion disappeared, suddenly became an awful lot clearer to fans who might otherwise have thought that he was recklessly directing his troops to go over the top, like some gungho First World War general urging his men on by means of a brief and dramatically chorographed appearance from the safety of his heavily sandbagged, smoke-filled dugout.
No, this was certainly not one of those into-the-valley-of-death moments but more a for-christ-sake-close-ranks plea that spoke volumes to both the uninitiated supporters and those on the pitch who had been vigorously drilled in a defensive art and had suddenly forgotten how to carry out the practice without dropping their rifles all over the place. Two goals up, pressure eased, did Sarri detect a slight deleliction of duty in the ranks, specifically the back four? You bet your sweet Sky sponsorship life he did! Yet defensively, this is not about the debunking of basic Sarriball principles,his shutting down of passing lanes centrally and the forcing of opponents wide, but all about distances. As he was quick to point out, losing focus on distances meant we were not able to press properly and whenever a midfielder or a winger stepped up [to force the press] even though the shape was always the required perfect 4-4-2, the space in between was too wide for the whole process to be effective.
Moreover, when it failed, that space was filled with Arsenal midfielders, the ball played out wide, and the subsequent pullbacks cut us to ribbons. Yet for the first quarter our attacking counter-press worked a treat, so where did it all go wrong in the second and why did it take a halftime team talk refresher course to put it right? The answer to the first part lies in those two telling words 'lost distances' and I believe the reason for the second is that the inexperience of our back four, together with a certain amount of complacency brought on by that early two goal advantage, led to the midfield space stretching from an acceptable and manageable 15 metres into a gap almost double the size. Quite simply, Arsenal's players suddenly had room to move. Add to this the fact that, three men or four, Kante is no longer our gatekeeper for the defence and you have a plausible and hopefully repairable cause for what might otherwise be regarded as a serious spanner in the Sarri-ball works. Still, it is good to know that spanner isn't David Luis or Tony Rudiger, nor on this occasion was it anything to do with faulty full backs. But, that said...
Act 3 - Newcastle
Unsurprisingly and unhelpfully (another Arse-type approach would have tested metal as opposed to merely tempering it) Benitez posed a totally different set of problems for Sarri-ball to solve. Sarri-ball versus sorry-ball (to quote Henry Winter of The Times) and this time the space might as well have been as wide as the Spanish waiter's midriff because it was never going to be occupied by Geordie hoardes who were otherwise engaged in keeping a strict 5-4-1 formation intact and in their own half for as long as it took to stop us scoring and ruin the game as a spectacle. In such circumstances space was not a concern, although pace obviously was and no matter how much Hazard magic survived the [unpunished] buffeting it got we conjured up precious little of it to break through the lowest of low blocks and somehow (Geezer on his heels) even managed to concede an equaliser that could have been so costly, but ultimately only provided the stat of the day - Joselu's goal was Newcastle's first on target since the sixth minute and their only shot on target in the second half!! So much for the Geordies being described (on Sky) as 'unfortunate' not to pick up a point.
Still, never mind, defensive aberations and burrowing through low blocks can be remedied in the fullness of time... about a month or so Sarri informed the media and then, once up to speed, there should be no stopping us. In the meantime Bournemouth would provide further opportunity to measure Sarri-ball in a toe-to-toe contest against another footballing side, or at least that was the script we expected to follow...
Act 4 – Bournemouth
… sadly, it was to be rewritten for the Cherries by Eddie Howe, no doubt to prevent them from becoming, for want of a better phrase, easy pickings. Chelsea had 81 per cent possession in their previous game against Newcastle and it was a similar story as Bournemouth decided to go defensive by ditching their back four principles in favour of a three and compromised even further by making it a five at the first sign of pressure, of which there was plenty. The result, other than being a hard fought 2-0 win, was probaly best summed up by a single statistic - Chelsea had exactly 24 shots in both of their Premier League home games. Little wonder, then, that eventually the Howe Blues Plan failed and, like the Python's Norwegian Blue parrot, it ended up not fooling anybody, not just sleeping, just dead from the 72nd minute onwards. Again, Sarri summed things up perfectly:-
"This kind of match usually you can win in the last 20-25 minutes. The match was very difficult against a very organised team. They defended very aggressively and the situation was not so easy."
All very gracious, but I'm guessing that Maurizio is looking forward in the future to much stiffer Sarri-ball examinations than this turned out to be, when any ghosts in his machine loom larger and are either busted or end up busting us. Another example of the [as yet] unknowns that make this season such a fascinating one was touched upon by Chelsea TV's Ben Andrews during commentary when he confessed to Jason Cundy, during a lull in the play shortly after Hazard had sewn the game up, that he was still none the wiser as to whether Kepa was a good goalkeeper or not. Not a clue, because he has hardly had a save or a sweeper-keeper manoeurve to make.
Sarri must feel the same about that cliché otherwise known as the last piece of the midfield jigsaw. Is it to be Kovacic, Barkley or Loftus-Cheek? These are the questions the boss must be asking himself four games in, while up front it certainly would not have escaped the been-there-done-that expert attacking eye of Giafranco Zola that (Hazard apart) we lack a world class goal poacher capable of tucking away chances on a regular basis. The goals have tended to arrive when Giroud comes on, but he is our impact player and if Morata does not find form soon and the back of the net consistently there has to be a Sarri-ball accommodating argument in favour of Hazard playing as a false nine at some stage in proceedings.
Finally, no review would be complete without a selection of Sarri-ball pros and cons over this shortest of four-game courses, so here are mine, together with a couple of outside bets to make a breakthrough:-
The Pros:-
Marcus Alonso - dynamic and a major Sarri-ball surprise, but his defending still needs working on.
Mateo Kovacic - could be the perfect foil for Kante.
Pedro - taken to Sarri-ball like a duck to water.
The Cons:-
David Luiz - some teams have a back four player who is the glue that holds everything together, Geezer is a marmite equivalent and you either love or hate the cavalier talent he brings to the party.
Alvaro Morata - Sarri-ball is all about pace going forward and he must learn to play better on the half-turn to achieve this or his days will be numbered.
N'Golo Kante - not really a 'con' in the truest sense here, but there can be no question that what we have gained on the swings of his newly-acquired attacking play we have lost on the roundabouts when it comes to his covering in defence.
Potential Breakthroughs;-
Ethan Ampadu - pure guesswork, maybe, but I wont be surprised if he emerges as either the cover for Luiz in the Europa League games or challenges for that last piece jigsaw place in midfield.
Callum Hudson-Odoi – and if Ethan was guesswork Callum must really be wishful thinking on my part, but Sarri has already been very complimentary about the kid, the Europa League will be a showcase and I'm backing him to be, at the very least, back on the first team bench regularly by Christmas at the latest.

 

Act 1 - Huddersfield
As scene-setters go this one told us very little about the Sarri-ball play in general and even less about the plot, the home team offering no more than token resistance and allowing Jorginho to take centre stage and steal the entire show. If Chelsea fans learnt anything at all regarding the coming season as a whole and how it will unfold it was that this late acquisition from Napoli is going to be an integral part of it and we had better get used to seeing him constantly on the ball over ninety minutes, passing more times than it was ever thought humanly possible before his arrival. Indeed, such is his overiding importance N'Golo Kante has had to change role, our steam-driven engine room now futher forward and distinctly fresh air and open plan in outlook. Like it or not (still not sure either way) both players scored and Sarri has deemed the switch necessary, thereby emphasising an uncompromising need to accommodate Jorginho at all cost.
In other Huddersfield news, Sarri's 4-3-3 appeared slower to slip into gear than most optimists anticipated while Alvaro Morata struggled to link up with his team-mates, as most pessimists predicted. He often cut an isolated figure in the final third, but if you are an Alvaro fan this could conceivably be put down to rustiness whereas, if you're not and set in your ways, well, he's rubbish and the sooner Giroud hits the ground trundling the better. So, apart from these two continuing debates and Sarri plumping for Pedro and Barkley in supporting roles, that was about it from the northern outpost, with those soothsayers who thought that the Arsenal game would reveal a great deal more than this lame yorkie capitulation soon to be proved correct.
Act 2 - Arsenal
Even if we were to emerge from the eargerly anticipated London derby a little less sure of ourselves and still pretty much in the dark as to how streamlined Sarri-ball can actually become, the game itself had absolutely everything, However, despite taking all 3 points it was impossible not to feel anything other than a sense of relief at the final whistle. It was therefore fit and proper that Sarri, much to his credit and in circumstances where he could easily have lapsed into full-on Jose smug mode, to dissect the rollacoaster ride of a match in this insightful summation:-
“We have to improve in the defensive phase and I’m not talking about only the defenders. I mean the defensive phase of all the team, all the players. If we press very high, we are able to do well. But when we are not able to press in the other half, we are in trouble. We did very well for 75 minutes of the 90. Inside there were 15 horrible minutes. We lost distances, we were not able to press.”
Heart on sleeve honesty from the boss when for many it was just happy days, maximum points, sticking it to a London rival,what could possibly be better than that for even the most cynical glass half-full Shed Ender? Well, truth be told, nagging doubts still existed in many a Chels fan's mind and here was the inventor in his match confessional giving a brief of glimpse of the Sarri-ball highs and lows that will inevitably be a feature this season. His quote says it all and his actions on the touchline at the time, those frantic gestures to advance as a two goal cushion disappeared, suddenly became an awful lot clearer to fans who might otherwise have thought that he was recklessly directing his troops to go over the top, like some gungho First World War general urging his men on by means of a brief and dramatically chorographed appearance from the safety of his heavily sandbagged, smoke-filled dugout.
No, this was certainly not one of those into-the-valley-of-death moments but more a for-christ-sake-close-ranks plea that spoke volumes to both the uninitiated supporters and those on the pitch who had been vigorously drilled in a defensive art and had suddenly forgotten how to carry out the practice without dropping their rifles all over the place. Two goals up, pressure eased, did Sarri detect a slight deleliction of duty in the ranks, specifically the back four? You bet your sweet Sky sponsorship life he did! Yet defensively, this is not about the debunking of basic Sarriball principles,his shutting down of passing lanes centrally and the forcing of opponents wide, but all about distances. As he was quick to point out, losing focus on distances meant we were not able to press properly and whenever a midfielder or a winger stepped up [to force the press] even though the shape was always the required perfect 4-4-2, the space in between was too wide for the whole process to be effective.
Moreover, when it failed, that space was filled with Arsenal midfielders, the ball played out wide, and the subsequent pullbacks cut us to ribbons. Yet for the first quarter our attacking counter-press worked a treat, so where did it all go wrong in the second and why did it take a halftime team talk refresher course to put it right? The answer to the first part lies in those two telling words 'lost distances' and I believe the reason for the second is that the inexperience of our back four, together with a certain amount of complacency brought on by that early two goal advantage, led to the midfield space stretching from an acceptable and manageable 15 metres into a gap almost double the size. Quite simply, Arsenal's players suddenly had room to move. Add to this the fact that, three men or four, Kante is no longer our gatekeeper for the defence and you have a plausible and hopefully repairable cause for what might otherwise be regarded as a serious spanner in the Sarri-ball works. Still, it is good to know that spanner isn't David Luis or Tony Rudiger, nor on this occasion was it anything to do with faulty full backs. But, that said...
Act 3 - Newcastle
Unsurprisingly and unhelpfully (another Arse-type approach would have tested metal as opposed to merely tempering it) Benitez posed a totally different set of problems for Sarri-ball to solve. Sarri-ball versus sorry-ball (to quote Henry Winter of The Times) and this time the space might as well have been as wide as the Spanish waiter's midriff because it was never going to be occupied by Geordie hoardes who were otherwise engaged in keeping a strict 5-4-1 formation intact and in their own half for as long as it took to stop us scoring and ruin the game as a spectacle. In such circumstances space was not a concern, although pace obviously was and no matter how much Hazard magic survived the [unpunished] buffeting it got we conjured up precious little of it to break through the lowest of low blocks and somehow (Geezer on his heels) even managed to concede an equaliser that could have been so costly, but ultimately only provided the stat of the day - Joselu's goal was Newcastle's first on target since the sixth minute and their only shot on target in the second half!! So much for the Geordies being described (on Sky) as 'unfortunate' not to pick up a point.
Still, never mind, defensive aberations and burrowing through low blocks can be remedied in the fullness of time... about a month or so Sarri informed the media and then, once up to speed, there should be no stopping us. In the meantime Bournemouth would provide further opportunity to measure Sarri-ball in a toe-to-toe contest against another footballing side, or at least that was the script we expected to follow...
Act 4 – Bournemouth
… sadly, it was to be rewritten for the Cherries by Eddie Howe, no doubt to prevent them from becoming, for want of a better phrase, easy pickings. Chelsea had 81 per cent possession in their previous game against Newcastle and it was a similar story as Bournemouth decided to go defensive by ditching their back four principles in favour of a three and compromised even further by making it a five at the first sign of pressure, of which there was plenty. The result, other than being a hard fought 2-0 win, was probaly best summed up by a single statistic - Chelsea had exactly 24 shots in both of their Premier League home games. Little wonder, then, that eventually the Howe Blues Plan failed and, like the Python's Norwegian Blue parrot, it ended up not fooling anybody, not just sleeping, just dead from the 72nd minute onwards. Again, Sarri summed things up perfectly:-
"This kind of match usually you can win in the last 20-25 minutes. The match was very difficult against a very organised team. They defended very aggressively and the situation was not so easy."
All very gracious, but I'm guessing that Maurizio is looking forward in the future to much stiffer Sarri-ball examinations than this turned out to be, when any ghosts in his machine loom larger and are either busted or end up busting us. Another example of the [as yet] unknowns that make this season such a fascinating one was touched upon by Chelsea TV's Ben Andrews during commentary when he confessed to Jason Cundy, during a lull in the play shortly after Hazard had sewn the game up, that he was still none the wiser as to whether Kepa was a good goalkeeper or not. Not a clue, because he has hardly had a save or a sweeper-keeper manoeurve to make.
Sarri must feel the same about that cliché otherwise known as the last piece of the midfield jigsaw. Is it to be Kovacic, Barkley or Loftus-Cheek? These are the questions the boss must be asking himself four games in, while up front it certainly would not have escaped the been-there-done-that expert attacking eye of Giafranco Zola that (Hazard apart) we lack a world class goal poacher capable of tucking away chances on a regular basis. The goals have tended to arrive when Giroud comes on, but he is our impact player and if Morata does not find form soon and the back of the net consistently there has to be a Sarri-ball accommodating argument in favour of Hazard playing as a false nine at some stage in proceedings.
Finally, no review would be complete without a selection of Sarri-ball pros and cons over this shortest of four-game courses, so here are mine, together with a couple of outside bets to make a breakthrough:-
The Pros:-
Marcus Alonso - dynamic and a major Sarri-ball surprise, but his defending still needs working on.
Mateo Kovacic - could be the perfect foil for Kante.
Pedro - taken to Sarri-ball like a duck to water.
The Cons:-
David Luiz - some teams have a back four player who is the glue that holds everything together, Geezer is a marmite equivalent and you either love or hate the cavalier talent he brings to the party.
Alvaro Morata - Sarri-ball is all about pace going forward and he must learn to play better on the half-turn to achieve this or his days will be numbered.
N'Golo Kante - not really a 'con' in the truest sense here, but there can be no question that what we have gained on the swings of his newly-acquired attacking play we have lost on the roundabouts when it comes to his covering in defence.
Potential Breakthroughs;-
Ethan Ampadu - pure guesswork, maybe, but I wont be surprised if he emerges as either the cover for Luiz in the Europa League games or challenges for that last piece jigsaw place in midfield.
Callum Hudson-Odoi – and if Ethan was guesswork Callum must really be wishful thinking on my part, but Sarri has already been very complimentary about the kid, the Europa League will be a showcase and I'm backing him to be, at the very least, back on the first team bench regularly by Christmas at the latest.

 

Act 1 - Huddersfield
As scene-setters go this one told us very little about the Sarri-ball play in general and even less about the plot, the home team offering no more than token resistance and allowing Jorginho to take centre stage and steal the entire show. If Chelsea fans learnt anything at all regarding the coming season as a whole and how it will unfold it was that this late acquisition from Napoli is going to be an integral part of it and we had better get used to seeing him constantly on the ball over ninety minutes, passing more times than it was ever thought humanly possible before his arrival. Indeed, such is his overiding importance N'Golo Kante has had to change role, our steam-driven engine room now futher forward and distinctly fresh air and open plan in outlook. Like it or not (still not sure either way) both players scored and Sarri has deemed the switch necessary, thereby emphasising an uncompromising need to accommodate Jorginho at all cost.
In other Huddersfield news, Sarri's 4-3-3 appeared slower to slip into gear than most optimists anticipated while Alvaro Morata struggled to link up with his team-mates, as most pessimists predicted. He often cut an isolated figure in the final third, but if you are an Alvaro fan this could conceivably be put down to rustiness whereas, if you're not and set in your ways, well, he's rubbish and the sooner Giroud hits the ground trundling the better. So, apart from these two continuing debates and Sarri plumping for Pedro and Barkley in supporting roles, that was about it from the northern outpost, with those soothsayers who thought that the Arsenal game would reveal a great deal more than this lame yorkie capitulation soon to be proved correct.
Act 2 - Arsenal
Even if we were to emerge from the eargerly anticipated London derby a little less sure of ourselves and still pretty much in the dark as to how streamlined Sarri-ball can actually become, the game itself had absolutely everything, However, despite taking all 3 points it was impossible not to feel anything other than a sense of relief at the final whistle. It was therefore fit and proper that Sarri, much to his credit and in circumstances where he could easily have lapsed into full-on Jose smug mode, to dissect the rollacoaster ride of a match in this insightful summation:-
“We have to improve in the defensive phase and I’m not talking about only the defenders. I mean the defensive phase of all the team, all the players. If we press very high, we are able to do well. But when we are not able to press in the other half, we are in trouble. We did very well for 75 minutes of the 90. Inside there were 15 horrible minutes. We lost distances, we were not able to press.”
Heart on sleeve honesty from the boss when for many it was just happy days, maximum points, sticking it to a London rival,what could possibly be better than that for even the most cynical glass half-full Shed Ender? Well, truth be told, nagging doubts still existed in many a Chels fan's mind and here was the inventor in his match confessional giving a brief of glimpse of the Sarri-ball highs and lows that will inevitably be a feature this season. His quote says it all and his actions on the touchline at the time, those frantic gestures to advance as a two goal cushion disappeared, suddenly became an awful lot clearer to fans who might otherwise have thought that he was recklessly directing his troops to go over the top, like some gungho First World War general urging his men on by means of a brief and dramatically chorographed appearance from the safety of his heavily sandbagged, smoke-filled dugout.
No, this was certainly not one of those into-the-valley-of-death moments but more a for-christ-sake-close-ranks plea that spoke volumes to both the uninitiated supporters and those on the pitch who had been vigorously drilled in a defensive art and had suddenly forgotten how to carry out the practice without dropping their rifles all over the place. Two goals up, pressure eased, did Sarri detect a slight deleliction of duty in the ranks, specifically the back four? You bet your sweet Sky sponsorship life he did! Yet defensively, this is not about the debunking of basic Sarriball principles,his shutting down of passing lanes centrally and the forcing of opponents wide, but all about distances. As he was quick to point out, losing focus on distances meant we were not able to press properly and whenever a midfielder or a winger stepped up [to force the press] even though the shape was always the required perfect 4-4-2, the space in between was too wide for the whole process to be effective.
Moreover, when it failed, that space was filled with Arsenal midfielders, the ball played out wide, and the subsequent pullbacks cut us to ribbons. Yet for the first quarter our attacking counter-press worked a treat, so where did it all go wrong in the second and why did it take a halftime team talk refresher course to put it right? The answer to the first part lies in those two telling words 'lost distances' and I believe the reason for the second is that the inexperience of our back four, together with a certain amount of complacency brought on by that early two goal advantage, led to the midfield space stretching from an acceptable and manageable 15 metres into a gap almost double the size. Quite simply, Arsenal's players suddenly had room to move. Add to this the fact that, three men or four, Kante is no longer our gatekeeper for the defence and you have a plausible and hopefully repairable cause for what might otherwise be regarded as a serious spanner in the Sarri-ball works. Still, it is good to know that spanner isn't David Luis or Tony Rudiger, nor on this occasion was it anything to do with faulty full backs. But, that said...
Act 3 - Newcastle
Unsurprisingly and unhelpfully (another Arse-type approach would have tested metal as opposed to merely tempering it) Benitez posed a totally different set of problems for Sarri-ball to solve. Sarri-ball versus sorry-ball (to quote Henry Winter of The Times) and this time the space might as well have been as wide as the Spanish waiter's midriff because it was never going to be occupied by Geordie hoardes who were otherwise engaged in keeping a strict 5-4-1 formation intact and in their own half for as long as it took to stop us scoring and ruin the game as a spectacle. In such circumstances space was not a concern, although pace obviously was and no matter how much Hazard magic survived the [unpunished] buffeting it got we conjured up precious little of it to break through the lowest of low blocks and somehow (Geezer on his heels) even managed to concede an equaliser that could have been so costly, but ultimately only provided the stat of the day - Joselu's goal was Newcastle's first on target since the sixth minute and their only shot on target in the second half!! So much for the Geordies being described (on Sky) as 'unfortunate' not to pick up a point.
Still, never mind, defensive aberations and burrowing through low blocks can be remedied in the fullness of time... about a month or so Sarri informed the media and then, once up to speed, there should be no stopping us. In the meantime Bournemouth would provide further opportunity to measure Sarri-ball in a toe-to-toe contest against another footballing side, or at least that was the script we expected to follow...
Act 4 – Bournemouth
… sadly, it was to be rewritten for the Cherries by Eddie Howe, no doubt to prevent them from becoming, for want of a better phrase, easy pickings. Chelsea had 81 per cent possession in their previous game against Newcastle and it was a similar story as Bournemouth decided to go defensive by ditching their back four principles in favour of a three and compromised even further by making it a five at the first sign of pressure, of which there was plenty. The result, other than being a hard fought 2-0 win, was probaly best summed up by a single statistic - Chelsea had exactly 24 shots in both of their Premier League home games. Little wonder, then, that eventually the Howe Blues Plan failed and, like the Python's Norwegian Blue parrot, it ended up not fooling anybody, not just sleeping, just dead from the 72nd minute onwards. Again, Sarri summed things up perfectly:-
"This kind of match usually you can win in the last 20-25 minutes. The match was very difficult against a very organised team. They defended very aggressively and the situation was not so easy."
All very gracious, but I'm guessing that Maurizio is looking forward in the future to much stiffer Sarri-ball examinations than this turned out to be, when any ghosts in his machine loom larger and are either busted or end up busting us. Another example of the [as yet] unknowns that make this season such a fascinating one was touched upon by Chelsea TV's Ben Andrews during commentary when he confessed to Jason Cundy, during a lull in the play shortly after Hazard had sewn the game up, that he was still none the wiser as to whether Kepa was a good goalkeeper or not. Not a clue, because he has hardly had a save or a sweeper-keeper manoeurve to make.
Sarri must feel the same about that cliché otherwise known as the last piece of the midfield jigsaw. Is it to be Kovacic, Barkley or Loftus-Cheek? These are the questions the boss must be asking himself four games in, while up front it certainly would not have escaped the been-there-done-that expert attacking eye of Giafranco Zola that (Hazard apart) we lack a world class goal poacher capable of tucking away chances on a regular basis. The goals have tended to arrive when Giroud comes on, but he is our impact player and if Morata does not find form soon and the back of the net consistently there has to be a Sarri-ball accommodating argument in favour of Hazard playing as a false nine at some stage in proceedings.
Finally, no review would be complete without a selection of Sarri-ball pros and cons over this shortest of four-game courses, so here are mine, together with a couple of outside bets to make a breakthrough:-
The Pros:-
Marcus Alonso - dynamic and a major Sarri-ball surprise, but his defending still needs working on.
Mateo Kovacic - could be the perfect foil for Kante.
Pedro - taken to Sarri-ball like a duck to water.
The Cons:-
David Luiz - some teams have a back four player who is the glue that holds everything together, Geezer is a marmite equivalent and you either love or hate the cavalier talent he brings to the party.
Alvaro Morata - Sarri-ball is all about pace going forward and he must learn to play better on the half-turn to achieve this or his days will be numbered.
N'Golo Kante - not really a 'con' in the truest sense here, but there can be no question that what we have gained on the swings of his newly-acquired attacking play we have lost on the roundabouts when it comes to his covering in defence.
Potential Breakthroughs;-
Ethan Ampadu - pure guesswork, maybe, but I wont be surprised if he emerges as either the cover for Luiz in the Europa League games or challenges for that last piece jigsaw place in midfield.
Callum Hudson-Odoi – and if Ethan was guesswork Callum must really be wishful thinking on my part, but Sarri has already been very complimentary about the kid, the Europa League will be a showcase and I'm backing him to be, at the very least, back on the first team bench regularly by Christmas at the latest.

 

Act 1 - Huddersfield
As scene-setters go this one told us very little about the Sarri-ball play in general and even less about the plot, the home team offering no more than token resistance and allowing Jorginho to take centre stage and steal the entire show. If Chelsea fans learnt anything at all regarding the coming season as a whole and how it will unfold it was that this late acquisition from Napoli is going to be an integral part of it and we had better get used to seeing him constantly on the ball over ninety minutes, passing more times than it was ever thought humanly possible before his arrival. Indeed, such is his overiding importance N'Golo Kante has had to change role, our steam-driven engine room now futher forward and distinctly fresh air and open plan in outlook. Like it or not (still not sure either way) both players scored and Sarri has deemed the switch necessary, thereby emphasising an uncompromising need to accommodate Jorginho at all cost.
In other Huddersfield news, Sarri's 4-3-3 appeared slower to slip into gear than most optimists anticipated while Alvaro Morata struggled to link up with his team-mates, as most pessimists predicted. He often cut an isolated figure in the final third, but if you are an Alvaro fan this could conceivably be put down to rustiness whereas, if you're not and set in your ways, well, he's rubbish and the sooner Giroud hits the ground trundling the better. So, apart from these two continuing debates and Sarri plumping for Pedro and Barkley in supporting roles, that was about it from the northern outpost, with those soothsayers who thought that the Arsenal game would reveal a great deal more than this lame yorkie capitulation soon to be proved correct.
Act 2 - Arsenal
Even if we were to emerge from the eargerly anticipated London derby a little less sure of ourselves and still pretty much in the dark as to how streamlined Sarri-ball can actually become, the game itself had absolutely everything, However, despite taking all 3 points it was impossible not to feel anything other than a sense of relief at the final whistle. It was therefore fit and proper that Sarri, much to his credit and in circumstances where he could easily have lapsed into full-on Jose smug mode, to dissect the rollacoaster ride of a match in this insightful summation:-
“We have to improve in the defensive phase and I’m not talking about only the defenders. I mean the defensive phase of all the team, all the players. If we press very high, we are able to do well. But when we are not able to press in the other half, we are in trouble. We did very well for 75 minutes of the 90. Inside there were 15 horrible minutes. We lost distances, we were not able to press.”
Heart on sleeve honesty from the boss when for many it was just happy days, maximum points, sticking it to a London rival,what could possibly be better than that for even the most cynical glass half-full Shed Ender? Well, truth be told, nagging doubts still existed in many a Chels fan's mind and here was the inventor in his match confessional giving a brief of glimpse of the Sarri-ball highs and lows that will inevitably be a feature this season. His quote says it all and his actions on the touchline at the time, those frantic gestures to advance as a two goal cushion disappeared, suddenly became an awful lot clearer to fans who might otherwise have thought that he was recklessly directing his troops to go over the top, like some gungho First World War general urging his men on by means of a brief and dramatically chorographed appearance from the safety of his heavily sandbagged, smoke-filled dugout.
No, this was certainly not one of those into-the-valley-of-death moments but more a for-christ-sake-close-ranks plea that spoke volumes to both the uninitiated supporters and those on the pitch who had been vigorously drilled in a defensive art and had suddenly forgotten how to carry out the practice without dropping their rifles all over the place. Two goals up, pressure eased, did Sarri detect a slight deleliction of duty in the ranks, specifically the back four? You bet your sweet Sky sponsorship life he did! Yet defensively, this is not about the debunking of basic Sarriball principles,his shutting down of passing lanes centrally and the forcing of opponents wide, but all about distances. As he was quick to point out, losing focus on distances meant we were not able to press properly and whenever a midfielder or a winger stepped up [to force the press] even though the shape was always the required perfect 4-4-2, the space in between was too wide for the whole process to be effective.
Moreover, when it failed, that space was filled with Arsenal midfielders, the ball played out wide, and the subsequent pullbacks cut us to ribbons. Yet for the first quarter our attacking counter-press worked a treat, so where did it all go wrong in the second and why did it take a halftime team talk refresher course to put it right? The answer to the first part lies in those two telling words 'lost distances' and I believe the reason for the second is that the inexperience of our back four, together with a certain amount of complacency brought on by that early two goal advantage, led to the midfield space stretching from an acceptable and manageable 15 metres into a gap almost double the size. Quite simply, Arsenal's players suddenly had room to move. Add to this the fact that, three men or four, Kante is no longer our gatekeeper for the defence and you have a plausible and hopefully repairable cause for what might otherwise be regarded as a serious spanner in the Sarri-ball works. Still, it is good to know that spanner isn't David Luis or Tony Rudiger, nor on this occasion was it anything to do with faulty full backs. But, that said...
Act 3 - Newcastle
Unsurprisingly and unhelpfully (another Arse-type approach would have tested metal as opposed to merely tempering it) Benitez posed a totally different set of problems for Sarri-ball to solve. Sarri-ball versus sorry-ball (to quote Henry Winter of The Times) and this time the space might as well have been as wide as the Spanish waiter's midriff because it was never going to be occupied by Geordie hoardes who were otherwise engaged in keeping a strict 5-4-1 formation intact and in their own half for as long as it took to stop us scoring and ruin the game as a spectacle. In such circumstances space was not a concern, although pace obviously was and no matter how much Hazard magic survived the [unpunished] buffeting it got we conjured up precious little of it to break through the lowest of low blocks and somehow (Geezer on his heels) even managed to concede an equaliser that could have been so costly, but ultimately only provided the stat of the day - Joselu's goal was Newcastle's first on target since the sixth minute and their only shot on target in the second half!! So much for the Geordies being described (on Sky) as 'unfortunate' not to pick up a point.
Still, never mind, defensive aberations and burrowing through low blocks can be remedied in the fullness of time... about a month or so Sarri informed the media and then, once up to speed, there should be no stopping us. In the meantime Bournemouth would provide further opportunity to measure Sarri-ball in a toe-to-toe contest against another footballing side, or at least that was the script we expected to follow...
Act 4 – Bournemouth
… sadly, it was to be rewritten for the Cherries by Eddie Howe, no doubt to prevent them from becoming, for want of a better phrase, easy pickings. Chelsea had 81 per cent possession in their previous game against Newcastle and it was a similar story as Bournemouth decided to go defensive by ditching their back four principles in favour of a three and compromised even further by making it a five at the first sign of pressure, of which there was plenty. The result, other than being a hard fought 2-0 win, was probaly best summed up by a single statistic - Chelsea had exactly 24 shots in both of their Premier League home games. Little wonder, then, that eventually the Howe Blues Plan failed and, like the Python's Norwegian Blue parrot, it ended up not fooling anybody, not just sleeping, just dead from the 72nd minute onwards. Again, Sarri summed things up perfectly:-
"This kind of match usually you can win in the last 20-25 minutes. The match was very difficult against a very organised team. They defended very aggressively and the situation was not so easy."
All very gracious, but I'm guessing that Maurizio is looking forward in the future to much stiffer Sarri-ball examinations than this turned out to be, when any ghosts in his machine loom larger and are either busted or end up busting us. Another example of the [as yet] unknowns that make this season such a fascinating one was touched upon by Chelsea TV's Ben Andrews during commentary when he confessed to Jason Cundy, during a lull in the play shortly after Hazard had sewn the game up, that he was still none the wiser as to whether Kepa was a good goalkeeper or not. Not a clue, because he has hardly had a save or a sweeper-keeper manoeurve to make.
Sarri must feel the same about that cliché otherwise known as the last piece of the midfield jigsaw. Is it to be Kovacic, Barkley or Loftus-Cheek? These are the questions the boss must be asking himself four games in, while up front it certainly would not have escaped the been-there-done-that expert attacking eye of Giafranco Zola that (Hazard apart) we lack a world class goal poacher capable of tucking away chances on a regular basis. The goals have tended to arrive when Giroud comes on, but he is our impact player and if Morata does not find form soon and the back of the net consistently there has to be a Sarri-ball accommodating argument in favour of Hazard playing as a false nine at some stage in proceedings.
Finally, no review would be complete without a selection of Sarri-ball pros and cons over this shortest of four-game courses, so here are mine, together with a couple of outside bets to make a breakthrough:-
The Pros:-
Marcus Alonso - dynamic and a major Sarri-ball surprise, but his defending still needs working on.
Mateo Kovacic - could be the perfect foil for Kante.
Pedro - taken to Sarri-ball like a duck to water.
The Cons:-
David Luiz - some teams have a back four player who is the glue that holds everything together, Geezer is a marmite equivalent and you either love or hate the cavalier talent he brings to the party.
Alvaro Morata - Sarri-ball is all about pace going forward and he must learn to play better on the half-turn to achieve this or his days will be numbered.
N'Golo Kante - not really a 'con' in the truest sense here, but there can be no question that what we have gained on the swings of his newly-acquired attacking play we have lost on the roundabouts when it comes to his covering in defence.
Potential Breakthroughs;-
Ethan Ampadu - pure guesswork, maybe, but I wont be surprised if he emerges as either the cover for Luiz in the Europa League games or challenges for that last piece jigsaw place in midfield.
Callum Hudson-Odoi – and if Ethan was guesswork Callum must really be wishful thinking on my part, but Sarri has already been very complimentary about the kid, the Europa League will be a showcase and I'm backing him to be, at the very least, back on the first team bench regularly by Christmas at the latest.

 

Act 1 - Huddersfield
As scene-setters go this one told us very little about the Sarri-ball play in general and even less about the plot, the home team offering no more than token resistance and allowing Jorginho to take centre stage and steal the entire show. If Chelsea fans learnt anything at all regarding the coming season as a whole and how it will unfold it was that this late acquisition from Napoli is going to be an integral part of it and we had better get used to seeing him constantly on the ball over ninety minutes, passing more times than it was ever thought humanly possible before his arrival. Indeed, such is his overiding importance N'Golo Kante has had to change role, our steam-driven engine room now futher forward and distinctly fresh air and open plan in outlook. Like it or not (still not sure either way) both players scored and Sarri has deemed the switch necessary, thereby emphasising an uncompromising need to accommodate Jorginho at all cost.
In other Huddersfield news, Sarri's 4-3-3 appeared slower to slip into gear than most optimists anticipated while Alvaro Morata struggled to link up with his team-mates, as most pessimists predicted. He often cut an isolated figure in the final third, but if you are an Alvaro fan this could conceivably be put down to rustiness whereas, if you're not and set in your ways, well, he's rubbish and the sooner Giroud hits the ground trundling the better. So, apart from these two continuing debates and Sarri plumping for Pedro and Barkley in supporting roles, that was about it from the northern outpost, with those soothsayers who thought that the Arsenal game would reveal a great deal more than this lame yorkie capitulation soon to be proved correct.
Act 2 - Arsenal
Even if we were to emerge from the eargerly anticipated London derby a little less sure of ourselves and still pretty much in the dark as to how streamlined Sarri-ball can actually become, the game itself had absolutely everything, However, despite taking all 3 points it was impossible not to feel anything other than a sense of relief at the final whistle. It was therefore fit and proper that Sarri, much to his credit and in circumstances where he could easily have lapsed into full-on Jose smug mode, to dissect the rollacoaster ride of a match in this insightful summation:-
“We have to improve in the defensive phase and I’m not talking about only the defenders. I mean the defensive phase of all the team, all the players. If we press very high, we are able to do well. But when we are not able to press in the other half, we are in trouble. We did very well for 75 minutes of the 90. Inside there were 15 horrible minutes. We lost distances, we were not able to press.”
Heart on sleeve honesty from the boss when for many it was just happy days, maximum points, sticking it to a London rival,what could possibly be better than that for even the most cynical glass half-full Shed Ender? Well, truth be told, nagging doubts still existed in many a Chels fan's mind and here was the inventor in his match confessional giving a brief of glimpse of the Sarri-ball highs and lows that will inevitably be a feature this season. His quote says it all and his actions on the touchline at the time, those frantic gestures to advance as a two goal cushion disappeared, suddenly became an awful lot clearer to fans who might otherwise have thought that he was recklessly directing his troops to go over the top, like some gungho First World War general urging his men on by means of a brief and dramatically chorographed appearance from the safety of his heavily sandbagged, smoke-filled dugout.
No, this was certainly not one of those into-the-valley-of-death moments but more a for-christ-sake-close-ranks plea that spoke volumes to both the uninitiated supporters and those on the pitch who had been vigorously drilled in a defensive art and had suddenly forgotten how to carry out the practice without dropping their rifles all over the place. Two goals up, pressure eased, did Sarri detect a slight deleliction of duty in the ranks, specifically the back four? You bet your sweet Sky sponsorship life he did! Yet defensively, this is not about the debunking of basic Sarriball principles,his shutting down of passing lanes centrally and the forcing of opponents wide, but all about distances. As he was quick to point out, losing focus on distances meant we were not able to press properly and whenever a midfielder or a winger stepped up [to force the press] even though the shape was always the required perfect 4-4-2, the space in between was too wide for the whole process to be effective.
Moreover, when it failed, that space was filled with Arsenal midfielders, the ball played out wide, and the subsequent pullbacks cut us to ribbons. Yet for the first quarter our attacking counter-press worked a treat, so where did it all go wrong in the second and why did it take a halftime team talk refresher course to put it right? The answer to the first part lies in those two telling words 'lost distances' and I believe the reason for the second is that the inexperience of our back four, together with a certain amount of complacency brought on by that early two goal advantage, led to the midfield space stretching from an acceptable and manageable 15 metres into a gap almost double the size. Quite simply, Arsenal's players suddenly had room to move. Add to this the fact that, three men or four, Kante is no longer our gatekeeper for the defence and you have a plausible and hopefully repairable cause for what might otherwise be regarded as a serious spanner in the Sarri-ball works. Still, it is good to know that spanner isn't David Luis or Tony Rudiger, nor on this occasion was it anything to do with faulty full backs. But, that said...
Act 3 - Newcastle
Unsurprisingly and unhelpfully (another Arse-type approach would have tested metal as opposed to merely tempering it) Benitez posed a totally different set of problems for Sarri-ball to solve. Sarri-ball versus sorry-ball (to quote Henry Winter of The Times) and this time the space might as well have been as wide as the Spanish waiter's midriff because it was never going to be occupied by Geordie hoardes who were otherwise engaged in keeping a strict 5-4-1 formation intact and in their own half for as long as it took to stop us scoring and ruin the game as a spectacle. In such circumstances space was not a concern, although pace obviously was and no matter how much Hazard magic survived the [unpunished] buffeting it got we conjured up precious little of it to break through the lowest of low blocks and somehow (Geezer on his heels) even managed to concede an equaliser that could have been so costly, but ultimately only provided the stat of the day - Joselu's goal was Newcastle's first on target since the sixth minute and their only shot on target in the second half!! So much for the Geordies being described (on Sky) as 'unfortunate' not to pick up a point.
Still, never mind, defensive aberations and burrowing through low blocks can be remedied in the fullness of time... about a month or so Sarri informed the media and then, once up to speed, there should be no stopping us. In the meantime Bournemouth would provide further opportunity to measure Sarri-ball in a toe-to-toe contest against another footballing side, or at least that was the script we expected to follow...
Act 4 – Bournemouth
… sadly, it was to be rewritten for the Cherries by Eddie Howe, no doubt to prevent them from becoming, for want of a better phrase, easy pickings. Chelsea had 81 per cent possession in their previous game against Newcastle and it was a similar story as Bournemouth decided to go defensive by ditching their back four principles in favour of a three and compromised even further by making it a five at the first sign of pressure, of which there was plenty. The result, other than being a hard fought 2-0 win, was probaly best summed up by a single statistic - Chelsea had exactly 24 shots in both of their Premier League home games. Little wonder, then, that eventually the Howe Blues Plan failed and, like the Python's Norwegian Blue parrot, it ended up not fooling anybody, not just sleeping, just dead from the 72nd minute onwards. Again, Sarri summed things up perfectly:-
"This kind of match usually you can win in the last 20-25 minutes. The match was very difficult against a very organised team. They defended very aggressively and the situation was not so easy."
All very gracious, but I'm guessing that Maurizio is looking forward in the future to much stiffer Sarri-ball examinations than this turned out to be, when any ghosts in his machine loom larger and are either busted or end up busting us. Another example of the [as yet] unknowns that make this season such a fascinating one was touched upon by Chelsea TV's Ben Andrews during commentary when he confessed to Jason Cundy, during a lull in the play shortly after Hazard had sewn the game up, that he was still none the wiser as to whether Kepa was a good goalkeeper or not. Not a clue, because he has hardly had a save or a sweeper-keeper manoeurve to make.
Sarri must feel the same about that cliché otherwise known as the last piece of the midfield jigsaw. Is it to be Kovacic, Barkley or Loftus-Cheek? These are the questions the boss must be asking himself four games in, while up front it certainly would not have escaped the been-there-done-that expert attacking eye of Giafranco Zola that (Hazard apart) we lack a world class goal poacher capable of tucking away chances on a regular basis. The goals have tended to arrive when Giroud comes on, but he is our impact player and if Morata does not find form soon and the back of the net consistently there has to be a Sarri-ball accommodating argument in favour of Hazard playing as a false nine at some stage in proceedings.
Finally, no review would be complete without a selection of Sarri-ball pros and cons over this shortest of four-game courses, so here are mine, together with a couple of outside bets to make a breakthrough:-
The Pros:-
Marcus Alonso - dynamic and a major Sarri-ball surprise, but his defending still needs working on.
Mateo Kovacic - could be the perfect foil for Kante.
Pedro - taken to Sarri-ball like a duck to water.
The Cons:-
David Luiz - some teams have a back four player who is the glue that holds everything together, Geezer is a marmite equivalent and you either love or hate the cavalier talent he brings to the party.
Alvaro Morata - Sarri-ball is all about pace going forward and he must learn to play better on the half-turn to achieve this or his days will be numbered.
N'Golo Kante - not really a 'con' in the truest sense here, but there can be no question that what we have gained on the swings of his newly-acquired attacking play we have lost on the roundabouts when it comes to his covering in defence.
Potential Breakthroughs;-
Ethan Ampadu - pure guesswork, maybe, but I wont be surprised if he emerges as either the cover for Luiz in the Europa League games or challenges for that last piece jigsaw place in midfield.
Callum Hudson-Odoi – and if Ethan was guesswork Callum must really be wishful thinking on my part, but Sarri has already been very complimentary about the kid, the Europa League will be a showcase and I'm backing him to be, at the very least, back on the first team bench regularly by Christmas at the latest.

 

Act 1 - Huddersfield
As scene-setters go this one told us very little about the Sarri-ball play in general and even less about the plot, the home team offering no more than token resistance and allowing Jorginho to take centre stage and steal the entire show. If Chelsea fans learnt anything at all regarding the coming season as a whole and how it will unfold it was that this late acquisition from Napoli is going to be an integral part of it and we had better get used to seeing him constantly on the ball over ninety minutes, passing more times than it was ever thought humanly possible before his arrival. Indeed, such is his overiding importance N'Golo Kante has had to change role, our steam-driven engine room now futher forward and distinctly fresh air and open plan in outlook. Like it or not (still not sure either way) both players scored and Sarri has deemed the switch necessary, thereby emphasising an uncompromising need to accommodate Jorginho at all cost.
In other Huddersfield news, Sarri's 4-3-3 appeared slower to slip into gear than most optimists anticipated while Alvaro Morata struggled to link up with his team-mates, as most pessimists predicted. He often cut an isolated figure in the final third, but if you are an Alvaro fan this could conceivably be put down to rustiness whereas, if you're not and set in your ways, well, he's rubbish and the sooner Giroud hits the ground trundling the better. So, apart from these two continuing debates and Sarri plumping for Pedro and Barkley in supporting roles, that was about it from the northern outpost, with those soothsayers who thought that the Arsenal game would reveal a great deal more than this lame yorkie capitulation soon to be proved correct.
Act 2 - Arsenal
Even if we were to emerge from the eargerly anticipated London derby a little less sure of ourselves and still pretty much in the dark as to how streamlined Sarri-ball can actually become, the game itself had absolutely everything, However, despite taking all 3 points it was impossible not to feel anything other than a sense of relief at the final whistle. It was therefore fit and proper that Sarri, much to his credit and in circumstances where he could easily have lapsed into full-on Jose smug mode, to dissect the rollacoaster ride of a match in this insightful summation:-
“We have to improve in the defensive phase and I’m not talking about only the defenders. I mean the defensive phase of all the team, all the players. If we press very high, we are able to do well. But when we are not able to press in the other half, we are in trouble. We did very well for 75 minutes of the 90. Inside there were 15 horrible minutes. We lost distances, we were not able to press.”
Heart on sleeve honesty from the boss when for many it was just happy days, maximum points, sticking it to a London rival,what could possibly be better than that for even the most cynical glass half-full Shed Ender? Well, truth be told, nagging doubts still existed in many a Chels fan's mind and here was the inventor in his match confessional giving a brief of glimpse of the Sarri-ball highs and lows that will inevitably be a feature this season. His quote says it all and his actions on the touchline at the time, those frantic gestures to advance as a two goal cushion disappeared, suddenly became an awful lot clearer to fans who might otherwise have thought that he was recklessly directing his troops to go over the top, like some gungho First World War general urging his men on by means of a brief and dramatically chorographed appearance from the safety of his heavily sandbagged, smoke-filled dugout.
No, this was certainly not one of those into-the-valley-of-death moments but more a for-christ-sake-close-ranks plea that spoke volumes to both the uninitiated supporters and those on the pitch who had been vigorously drilled in a defensive art and had suddenly forgotten how to carry out the practice without dropping their rifles all over the place. Two goals up, pressure eased, did Sarri detect a slight deleliction of duty in the ranks, specifically the back four? You bet your sweet Sky sponsorship life he did! Yet defensively, this is not about the debunking of basic Sarriball principles,his shutting down of passing lanes centrally and the forcing of opponents wide, but all about distances. As he was quick to point out, losing focus on distances meant we were not able to press properly and whenever a midfielder or a winger stepped up [to force the press] even though the shape was always the required perfect 4-4-2, the space in between was too wide for the whole process to be effective.
Moreover, when it failed, that space was filled with Arsenal midfielders, the ball played out wide, and the subsequent pullbacks cut us to ribbons. Yet for the first quarter our attacking counter-press worked a treat, so where did it all go wrong in the second and why did it take a halftime team talk refresher course to put it right? The answer to the first part lies in those two telling words 'lost distances' and I believe the reason for the second is that the inexperience of our back four, together with a certain amount of complacency brought on by that early two goal advantage, led to the midfield space stretching from an acceptable and manageable 15 metres into a gap almost double the size. Quite simply, Arsenal's players suddenly had room to move. Add to this the fact that, three men or four, Kante is no longer our gatekeeper for the defence and you have a plausible and hopefully repairable cause for what might otherwise be regarded as a serious spanner in the Sarri-ball works. Still, it is good to know that spanner isn't David Luis or Tony Rudiger, nor on this occasion was it anything to do with faulty full backs. But, that said...
Act 3 - Newcastle
Unsurprisingly and unhelpfully (another Arse-type approach would have tested metal as opposed to merely tempering it) Benitez posed a totally different set of problems for Sarri-ball to solve. Sarri-ball versus sorry-ball (to quote Henry Winter of The Times) and this time the space might as well have been as wide as the Spanish waiter's midriff because it was never going to be occupied by Geordie hoardes who were otherwise engaged in keeping a strict 5-4-1 formation intact and in their own half for as long as it took to stop us scoring and ruin the game as a spectacle. In such circumstances space was not a concern, although pace obviously was and no matter how much Hazard magic survived the [unpunished] buffeting it got we conjured up precious little of it to break through the lowest of low blocks and somehow (Geezer on his heels) even managed to concede an equaliser that could have been so costly, but ultimately only provided the stat of the day - Joselu's goal was Newcastle's first on target since the sixth minute and their only shot on target in the second half!! So much for the Geordies being described (on Sky) as 'unfortunate' not to pick up a point.
Still, never mind, defensive aberations and burrowing through low blocks can be remedied in the fullness of time... about a month or so Sarri informed the media and then, once up to speed, there should be no stopping us. In the meantime Bournemouth would provide further opportunity to measure Sarri-ball in a toe-to-toe contest against another footballing side, or at least that was the script we expected to follow...
Act 4 – Bournemouth
… sadly, it was to be rewritten for the Cherries by Eddie Howe, no doubt to prevent them from becoming, for want of a better phrase, easy pickings. Chelsea had 81 per cent possession in their previous game against Newcastle and it was a similar story as Bournemouth decided to go defensive by ditching their back four principles in favour of a three and compromised even further by making it a five at the first sign of pressure, of which there was plenty. The result, other than being a hard fought 2-0 win, was probaly best summed up by a single statistic - Chelsea had exactly 24 shots in both of their Premier League home games. Little wonder, then, that eventually the Howe Blues Plan failed and, like the Python's Norwegian Blue parrot, it ended up not fooling anybody, not just sleeping, just dead from the 72nd minute onwards. Again, Sarri summed things up perfectly:-
"This kind of match usually you can win in the last 20-25 minutes. The match was very difficult against a very organised team. They defended very aggressively and the situation was not so easy."
All very gracious, but I'm guessing that Maurizio is looking forward in the future to much stiffer Sarri-ball examinations than this turned out to be, when any ghosts in his machine loom larger and are either busted or end up busting us. Another example of the [as yet] unknowns that make this season such a fascinating one was touched upon by Chelsea TV's Ben Andrews during commentary when he confessed to Jason Cundy, during a lull in the play shortly after Hazard had sewn the game up, that he was still none the wiser as to whether Kepa was a good goalkeeper or not. Not a clue, because he has hardly had a save or a sweeper-keeper manoeurve to make.
Sarri must feel the same about that cliché otherwise known as the last piece of the midfield jigsaw. Is it to be Kovacic, Barkley or Loftus-Cheek? These are the questions the boss must be asking himself four games in, while up front it certainly would not have escaped the been-there-done-that expert attacking eye of Giafranco Zola that (Hazard apart) we lack a world class goal poacher capable of tucking away chances on a regular basis. The goals have tended to arrive when Giroud comes on, but he is our impact player and if Morata does not find form soon and the back of the net consistently there has to be a Sarri-ball accommodating argument in favour of Hazard playing as a false nine at some stage in proceedings.
Finally, no review would be complete without a selection of Sarri-ball pros and cons over this shortest of four-game courses, so here are mine, together with a couple of outside bets to make a breakthrough:-
The Pros:-
Marcus Alonso - dynamic and a major Sarri-ball surprise, but his defending still needs working on.
Mateo Kovacic - could be the perfect foil for Kante.
Pedro - taken to Sarri-ball like a duck to water.
The Cons:-
David Luiz - some teams have a back four player who is the glue that holds everything together, Geezer is a marmite equivalent and you either love or hate the cavalier talent he brings to the party.
Alvaro Morata - Sarri-ball is all about pace going forward and he must learn to play better on the half-turn to achieve this or his days will be numbered.
N'Golo Kante - not really a 'con' in the truest sense here, but there can be no question that what we have gained on the swings of his newly-acquired attacking play we have lost on the roundabouts when it comes to his covering in defence.
Potential Breakthroughs;-
Ethan Ampadu - pure guesswork, maybe, but I wont be surprised if he emerges as either the cover for Luiz in the Europa League games or challenges for that last piece jigsaw place in midfield.
Callum Hudson-Odoi – and if Ethan was guesswork Callum must really be wishful thinking on my part, but Sarri has already been very complimentary about the kid, the Europa League will be a showcase and I'm backing him to be, at the very least, back on the first team bench regularly by Christmas at the latest.

 

Act 1 - Huddersfield
As scene-setters go this one told us very little about the Sarri-ball play in general and even less about the plot, the home team offering no more than token resistance and allowing Jorginho to take centre stage and steal the entire show. If Chelsea fans learnt anything at all regarding the coming season as a whole and how it will unfold it was that this late acquisition from Napoli is going to be an integral part of it and we had better get used to seeing him constantly on the ball over ninety minutes, passing more times than it was ever thought humanly possible before his arrival. Indeed, such is his overiding importance N'Golo Kante has had to change role, our steam-driven engine room now futher forward and distinctly fresh air and open plan in outlook. Like it or not (still not sure either way) both players scored and Sarri has deemed the switch necessary, thereby emphasising an uncompromising need to accommodate Jorginho at all cost.
In other Huddersfield news, Sarri's 4-3-3 appeared slower to slip into gear than most optimists anticipated while Alvaro Morata struggled to link up with his team-mates, as most pessimists predicted. He often cut an isolated figure in the final third, but if you are an Alvaro fan this could conceivably be put down to rustiness whereas, if you're not and set in your ways, well, he's rubbish and the sooner Giroud hits the ground trundling the better. So, apart from these two continuing debates and Sarri plumping for Pedro and Barkley in supporting roles, that was about it from the northern outpost, with those soothsayers who thought that the Arsenal game would reveal a great deal more than this lame yorkie capitulation soon to be proved correct.
Act 2 - Arsenal
Even if we were to emerge from the eargerly anticipated London derby a little less sure of ourselves and still pretty much in the dark as to how streamlined Sarri-ball can actually become, the game itself had absolutely everything, However, despite taking all 3 points it was impossible not to feel anything other than a sense of relief at the final whistle. It was therefore fit and proper that Sarri, much to his credit and in circumstances where he could easily have lapsed into full-on Jose smug mode, to dissect the rollacoaster ride of a match in this insightful summation:-
“We have to improve in the defensive phase and I’m not talking about only the defenders. I mean the defensive phase of all the team, all the players. If we press very high, we are able to do well. But when we are not able to press in the other half, we are in trouble. We did very well for 75 minutes of the 90. Inside there were 15 horrible minutes. We lost distances, we were not able to press.”
Heart on sleeve honesty from the boss when for many it was just happy days, maximum points, sticking it to a London rival,what could possibly be better than that for even the most cynical glass half-full Shed Ender? Well, truth be told, nagging doubts still existed in many a Chels fan's mind and here was the inventor in his match confessional giving a brief of glimpse of the Sarri-ball highs and lows that will inevitably be a feature this season. His quote says it all and his actions on the touchline at the time, those frantic gestures to advance as a two goal cushion disappeared, suddenly became an awful lot clearer to fans who might otherwise have thought that he was recklessly directing his troops to go over the top, like some gungho First World War general urging his men on by means of a brief and dramatically chorographed appearance from the safety of his heavily sandbagged, smoke-filled dugout.
No, this was certainly not one of those into-the-valley-of-death moments but more a for-christ-sake-close-ranks plea that spoke volumes to both the uninitiated supporters and those on the pitch who had been vigorously drilled in a defensive art and had suddenly forgotten how to carry out the practice without dropping their rifles all over the place. Two goals up, pressure eased, did Sarri detect a slight deleliction of duty in the ranks, specifically the back four? You bet your sweet Sky sponsorship life he did! Yet defensively, this is not about the debunking of basic Sarriball principles,his shutting down of passing lanes centrally and the forcing of opponents wide, but all about distances. As he was quick to point out, losing focus on distances meant we were not able to press properly and whenever a midfielder or a winger stepped up [to force the press] even though the shape was always the required perfect 4-4-2, the space in between was too wide for the whole process to be effective.
Moreover, when it failed, that space was filled with Arsenal midfielders, the ball played out wide, and the subsequent pullbacks cut us to ribbons. Yet for the first quarter our attacking counter-press worked a treat, so where did it all go wrong in the second and why did it take a halftime team talk refresher course to put it right? The answer to the first part lies in those two telling words 'lost distances' and I believe the reason for the second is that the inexperience of our back four, together with a certain amount of complacency brought on by that early two goal advantage, led to the midfield space stretching from an acceptable and manageable 15 metres into a gap almost double the size. Quite simply, Arsenal's players suddenly had room to move. Add to this the fact that, three men or four, Kante is no longer our gatekeeper for the defence and you have a plausible and hopefully repairable cause for what might otherwise be regarded as a serious spanner in the Sarri-ball works. Still, it is good to know that spanner isn't David Luis or Tony Rudiger, nor on this occasion was it anything to do with faulty full backs. But, that said...
Act 3 - Newcastle
Unsurprisingly and unhelpfully (another Arse-type approach would have tested metal as opposed to merely tempering it) Benitez posed a totally different set of problems for Sarri-ball to solve. Sarri-ball versus sorry-ball (to quote Henry Winter of The Times) and this time the space might as well have been as wide as the Spanish waiter's midriff because it was never going to be occupied by Geordie hoardes who were otherwise engaged in keeping a strict 5-4-1 formation intact and in their own half for as long as it took to stop us scoring and ruin the game as a spectacle. In such circumstances space was not a concern, although pace obviously was and no matter how much Hazard magic survived the [unpunished] buffeting it got we conjured up precious little of it to break through the lowest of low blocks and somehow (Geezer on his heels) even managed to concede an equaliser that could have been so costly, but ultimately only provided the stat of the day - Joselu's goal was Newcastle's first on target since the sixth minute and their only shot on target in the second half!! So much for the Geordies being described (on Sky) as 'unfortunate' not to pick up a point.
Still, never mind, defensive aberations and burrowing through low blocks can be remedied in the fullness of time... about a month or so Sarri informed the media and then, once up to speed, there should be no stopping us. In the meantime Bournemouth would provide further opportunity to measure Sarri-ball in a toe-to-toe contest against another footballing side, or at least that was the script we expected to follow...
Act 4 – Bournemouth
… sadly, it was to be rewritten for the Cherries by Eddie Howe, no doubt to prevent them from becoming, for want of a better phrase, easy pickings. Chelsea had 81 per cent possession in their previous game against Newcastle and it was a similar story as Bournemouth decided to go defensive by ditching their back four principles in favour of a three and compromised even further by making it a five at the first sign of pressure, of which there was plenty. The result, other than being a hard fought 2-0 win, was probaly best summed up by a single statistic - Chelsea had exactly 24 shots in both of their Premier League home games. Little wonder, then, that eventually the Howe Blues Plan failed and, like the Python's Norwegian Blue parrot, it ended up not fooling anybody, not just sleeping, just dead from the 72nd minute onwards. Again, Sarri summed things up perfectly:-
"This kind of match usually you can win in the last 20-25 minutes. The match was very difficult against a very organised team. They defended very aggressively and the situation was not so easy."
All very gracious, but I'm guessing that Maurizio is looking forward in the future to much stiffer Sarri-ball examinations than this turned out to be, when any ghosts in his machine loom larger and are either busted or end up busting us. Another example of the [as yet] unknowns that make this season such a fascinating one was touched upon by Chelsea TV's Ben Andrews during commentary when he confessed to Jason Cundy, during a lull in the play shortly after Hazard had sewn the game up, that he was still none the wiser as to whether Kepa was a good goalkeeper or not. Not a clue, because he has hardly had a save or a sweeper-keeper manoeurve to make.
Sarri must feel the same about that cliché otherwise known as the last piece of the midfield jigsaw. Is it to be Kovacic, Barkley or Loftus-Cheek? These are the questions the boss must be asking himself four games in, while up front it certainly would not have escaped the been-there-done-that expert attacking eye of Giafranco Zola that (Hazard apart) we lack a world class goal poacher capable of tucking away chances on a regular basis. The goals have tended to arrive when Giroud comes on, but he is our impact player and if Morata does not find form soon and the back of the net consistently there has to be a Sarri-ball accommodating argument in favour of Hazard playing as a false nine at some stage in proceedings.
Finally, no review would be complete without a selection of Sarri-ball pros and cons over this shortest of four-game courses, so here are mine, together with a couple of outside bets to make a breakthrough:-
The Pros:-
Marcus Alonso - dynamic and a major Sarri-ball surprise, but his defending still needs working on.
Mateo Kovacic - could be the perfect foil for Kante.
Pedro - taken to Sarri-ball like a duck to water.
The Cons:-
David Luiz - some teams have a back four player who is the glue that holds everything together, Geezer is a marmite equivalent and you either love or hate the cavalier talent he brings to the party.
Alvaro Morata - Sarri-ball is all about pace going forward and he must learn to play better on the half-turn to achieve this or his days will be numbered.
N'Golo Kante - not really a 'con' in the truest sense here, but there can be no question that what we have gained on the swings of his newly-acquired attacking play we have lost on the roundabouts when it comes to his covering in defence.
Potential Breakthroughs;-
Ethan Ampadu - pure guesswork, maybe, but I wont be surprised if he emerges as either the cover for Luiz in the Europa League games or challenges for that last piece jigsaw place in midfield.
Callum Hudson-Odoi – and if Ethan was guesswork Callum must really be wishful thinking on my part, but Sarri has already been very complimentary about the kid, the Europa League will be a showcase and I'm backing him to be, at the very least, back on the first team bench regularly by Christmas at the latest.

 

The exact quote was “I talk with the club about the market but only one or maybe two times, not more. I spoke about positions and characteristics but no names. So, I don’t know. I think we need something, but maybe only a player. We have very good midfielders, but maybe a midfielder with different characteristics [would be a good fit].”
Those different characteristics can be interpreted in many ways, but, on the assumption that Kante and Jorginho are permanent fixtures and Hazard is the only player in a similar situation up front, my guess is that he's after another option on the right of the front three. No surprise there then, bearing in mind the rumours surrounding Willian leaving, but if he stays a 'different characteristic' to his might well be that the player concerned has the versatility to play in the central role as well as compete for that right-sided berth. To my mind, that rules out Zaha, who by [almost] common consent is another who is more comfortable on the left, along with Hazard and Hudson-Odoi. If this speculation is correct [it wont be] the best available option is undoubtedly Martial, as he ticks all the boxes, whether Willian goes the other way or not.
Alternatively, the only black cloud on my horizon and one that I hardly want to mention but will, is that Sarri remains unconvinced over RLC, believing him to be too much like Barkley and Bakayoko and in need of yet another loan spell. Hodgson would love to have him back at Palace and his only bargaining chip is a certain Wilf Zaha, who definitely has 'different characteristics' to both Rueben, Ross and Baka, mores the pity. Perish the thought Sarri doesn't give RLC a fair crack of the whip, though stranger things have happened to the lad under our last two managers, but other Academy green shoots are there to be seen in Ampadu and CHO and Rueben has reportedly laid down the law regarding game time recently, so it isn't as if this scenario wont have been considered by the hierarchy.

 

The exact quote was “I talk with the club about the market but only one or maybe two times, not more. I spoke about positions and characteristics but no names. So, I don’t know. I think we need something, but maybe only a player. We have very good midfielders, but maybe a midfielder with different characteristics [would be a good fit].”
Those different characteristics can be interpreted in many ways, but, on the assumption that Kante and Jorginho are permanent fixtures and Hazard is the only player in a similar situation up front, my guess is that he's after another option on the right of the front three. No surprise there then, bearing in mind the rumours surrounding Willian leaving, but if he stays a 'different characteristic' to his might well be that the player concerned has the versatility to play in the central role as well as compete for that right-sided berth. To my mind, that rules out Zaha, who by [almost] common consent is another who is more comfortable on the left, along with Hazard and Hudson-Odoi. If this speculation is correct [it wont be] the best available option is undoubtedly Martial, as he ticks all the boxes, whether Willian goes the other way or not.
Alternatively, the only black cloud on my horizon and one that I hardly want to mention but will, is that Sarri remains unconvinced over RLC, believing him to be too much like Barkley and Bakayoko and in need of yet another loan spell. Hodgson would love to have him back at Palace and his only bargaining chip is a certain Wilf Zaha, who definitely has 'different characteristics' to both Rueben, Ross and Baka, mores the pity. Perish the thought Sarri doesn't give RLC a fair crack of the whip, though stranger things have happened to the lad under our last two managers, but other Academy green shoots are there to be seen in Ampadu and CHO and Rueben has reportedly laid down the law regarding game time recently, so it isn't as if this scenario wont have been considered by the hierarchy.

 

You too DB. The Shed End is a much more interesting place post Conte and it could get even better if Sarri kicks one of our habits (failure to play youth through fear of failure full stop) well before he's likely to kick one of his own. Conte ended up being just a big drag, but as far as I'm concerned Sarri can have as many as he wants if he gets the likes of RLC, Ampadu and young Callum performing regularly in the first team. Have you seen CHO's first 45 minutes of Sarriball? - the kid is the real deal no doubt about it. There aren't many who go back as far as me, but if they are on here they may well have spotted that Callum plays a lot like Bobby Tambling with a few modern day tricks thrown in for good measure. The same slightly hunched shoulders, rolling gait and directness that scares the life out of defenders. Tambling made his debut aged seventeen, just after I started going to the Bridge and all he had back then that Callum isn't gifted with now was a rocket shot with his left foot after going past his man either on the outside or cutting in.  

You too DB. The Shed End is a much more interesting place post Conte and it could get even better if Sarri kicks one of our habits (failure to play youth through fear of failure full stop) well before he's likely to kick one of his own. Conte ended up being just a big drag, but as far as I'm concerned Sarri can have as many as he wants if he gets the likes of RLC, Ampadu and young Callum performing regularly in the first team. Have you seen CHO's first 45 minutes of Sarriball? - the kid is the real deal no doubt about it. There aren't many who go back as far as me, but if they are on here they may well have spotted that Callum plays a lot like Bobby Tambling with a few modern day tricks thrown in for good measure. The same slightly hunched shoulders, rolling gait and directness that scares the life out of defenders. Tambling made his debut aged seventeen, just after I started going to the Bridge and all he had back then that Callum isn't gifted with now was a rocket shot with his left foot after going past his man either on the outside or cutting in.  

You too DB. The Shed End is a much more interesting place post Conte and it could get even better if Sarri kicks one of our habits (failure to play youth through fear of failure full stop) well before he's likely to kick one of his own. Conte ended up being just a big drag, but as far as I'm concerned Sarri can have as many as he wants if he gets the likes of RLC, Ampadu and young Callum performing regularly in the first team. Have you seen CHO's first 45 minutes of Sarriball? - the kid is the real deal no doubt about it. There aren't many who go back as far as me, but if they are on here they may well have spotted that Callum plays a lot like Bobby Tambling with a few modern day tricks thrown in for good measure. The same slightly hunched shoulders, rolling gait and directness that scares the life out of defenders. Tambling made his debut aged seventeen, just after I started going to the Bridge and all he had back then that Callum isn't gifted with now was a rocket shot with his left foot after going past his man either on the outside or cutting in.  

17 years old. If you're good enough you're old enough. If we loan him out I'm gonna go mental.

You too DB. The Shed End is a much more interesting place post Conte and it could get even better if Sarri kicks one of our habits (failure to play youth through fear of failure full stop) well before he's likely to kick one of his own. Conte ended up being just a big drag, but as far as I'm concerned Sarri can have as many as he wants if he gets the likes of RLC, Ampadu and young Callum performing regularly in the first team. Have you seen CHO's first 45 minutes of Sarriball? - the kid is the real deal no doubt about it. There aren't many who go back as far as me, but if they are on here they may well have spotted that Callum plays a lot like Bobby Tambling with a few modern day tricks thrown in for good measure. The same slightly hunched shoulders, rolling gait and directness that scares the life out of defenders. Tambling made his debut aged seventeen, just after I started going to the Bridge and all he had back then that Callum isn't gifted with now was a rocket shot with his left foot after going past his man either on the outside or cutting in.  

You too DB. The Shed End is a much more interesting place post Conte and it could get even better if Sarri kicks one of our habits (failure to play youth through fear of failure full stop) well before he's likely to kick one of his own. Conte ended up being just a big drag, but as far as I'm concerned Sarri can have as many as he wants if he gets the likes of RLC, Ampadu and young Callum performing regularly in the first team. Have you seen CHO's first 45 minutes of Sarriball? - the kid is the real deal no doubt about it. There aren't many who go back as far as me, but if they are on here they may well have spotted that Callum plays a lot like Bobby Tambling with a few modern day tricks thrown in for good measure. The same slightly hunched shoulders, rolling gait and directness that scares the life out of defenders. Tambling made his debut aged seventeen, just after I started going to the Bridge and all he had back then that Callum isn't gifted with now was a rocket shot with his left foot after going past his man either on the outside or cutting in.  

You too DB. The Shed End is a much more interesting place post Conte and it could get even better if Sarri kicks one of our habits (failure to play youth through fear of failure full stop) well before he's likely to kick one of his own. Conte ended up being just a big drag, but as far as I'm concerned Sarri can have as many as he wants if he gets the likes of RLC, Ampadu and young Callum performing regularly in the first team. Have you seen CHO's first 45 minutes of Sarriball? - the kid is the real deal no doubt about it. There aren't many who go back as far as me, but if they are on here they may well have spotted that Callum plays a lot like Bobby Tambling with a few modern day tricks thrown in for good measure. The same slightly hunched shoulders, rolling gait and directness that scares the life out of defenders. Tambling made his debut aged seventeen, just after I started going to the Bridge and all he had back then that Callum isn't gifted with now was a rocket shot with his left foot after going past his man either on the outside or cutting in.  

You too DB. The Shed End is a much more interesting place post Conte and it could get even better if Sarri kicks one of our habits (failure to play youth through fear of failure full stop) well before he's likely to kick one of his own. Conte ended up being just a big drag, but as far as I'm concerned Sarri can have as many as he wants if he gets the likes of RLC, Ampadu and young Callum performing regularly in the first team. Have you seen CHO's first 45 minutes of Sarriball? - the kid is the real deal no doubt about it. There aren't many who go back as far as me, but if they are on here they may well have spotted that Callum plays a lot like Bobby Tambling with a few modern day tricks thrown in for good measure. The same slightly hunched shoulders, rolling gait and directness that scares the life out of defenders. Tambling made his debut aged seventeen, just after I started going to the Bridge and all he had back then that Callum isn't gifted with now was a rocket shot with his left foot after going past his man either on the outside or cutting in.  

I always hate that argument - not our money so who cares?!!
We should ALL care the way football is heading with inflated transfer fees and wages for mediocre players as well as the top ones. It can't be sustainable in the long-term and it's ruining the game.
Many of clubs in the past have thought they could afford to compete and now look at them. Pompey, Leeds, Villa...................that's just a few and the list will grow and grow.

Ever since he was an old man
He's played the Serie halls
From Sorento up to Naples
He's hardly played them all
But you ain't seen nothing like him
With or without a trophy haul
That eff'n'blind smokin' banker
Sure plays a mean Sarriball
Well, that didn't take long, did it? And no Pauly, it is not without fully appreciating the irony that I've adapted Elton John's lyrics in the above introduction, but when all is said and (often little of it) done we have to start as we mean to go on, by tackling the facts and fiction unflinchingly:- in short, our new-coach-to-be, Mauricio Sarri, reportedly courts controversy at every turn, as does CFC, as did assorted managers of CFC over the years and if by now we the supporters cannot get used to this backdrop and the Fourth Estate fabrications that always accompany it then we never will. That said, his imminent appointment appears to have divided opinion more than most in recent times, primarily due to him still having a trophyless cabinet on fast approaching his sixtieth year, an unsightly Zorro zed of a zilch etched deep into the very heart of the man, though one that seemed no more than a mere distinguishing mark on the avuncular Claudio Ranieri way back in the early Noughties when the Chelsea bar was set nowhere near as high as it most certainly is now.
So, significantly, no such largesse oiling the wheels of Sarri's coaching career to date, but to his great credit he has sought to make a virtue out of the type of tightwad financial situation many a trophy-hungry managerial big beast would not even countenance, Guardiola, Mourinho, Zidane, to name but three of the bigger bear marketeers to be scooping out of wealthy club honeypots on a regular basis in the last decade. During that self same period Sarri made it abundantly clear he regarded spending vast sums on players as something of a cop out on the coaching side, a stated position that must come as music to Roman's ears, albeit a somewhat obvious stance to take when you are forever strapped for cash in the transfer market. Align this with the Italian's reputation for bringing in numerous youngsters at Empoli, improving them out of all recognition, before melding them with more established players and you sense that now might be just the right time to get the best out of Edin Hazard in a front three with the likes of Callum Hudson-Odoi and Tammy Abraham willing runners intertwined in supporting roles.
Indeed, the same opportunities for mentoring mergers like these are available in almost every position except that of goalkeeper where, with due respect to Willy Caballero, it is Thibaut Courtois who reigns in supreme, if sometimes uncertain, isolation. Yet even here we have seen a vulnerability when it comes to comfort on the ball and distribution under pressure, so personnel change under Sarri may well start between the posts and could be by design rather than the player merely wanting away for personal reasons. Either way, resolution will be easier under a new regime as a new broom always sweeps clean but, if Sarri turns out not to be as radical as many observers believe, that first team selection of outfield players currently at his disposal for the opening game of next season might easily be fashioned into the following formation, familiarity having bred a certain amount of contempt for Bakayoko amongst the fanbase and now set to be sensationally replaced by a Sarriball lynchpin called Jorginho:-
Azpilicueta, Rudiger, Christensen, Alonso, Jorginho, Kante, Fabregas, Moses, Giroud, Hazard.
Cue disbelief and Manc snubbery all round and I would even go so far as to say 'might easily' advisedly because I doubt the team will look anything like this once a suitable technique-seeking Sarri [wrecking] ball thuds into its facade and reveals the current Conte-suffering, shabby-chic look that's decidedly unfit for purpose in its present distressed state. After such a demolition job a better stab at a starting line-up might well be:-
Azpilicueta, Rudiger, Rugani, Emerson, Jorginho, Kante, Golovin, Bailey, Martial, Hazard.
Hey big spenders, happy days!! Then again, I say 'might well' advisedly because, at the risk of repeating myself twice over, I doubt the team will look anything like this once financial restraint in the form of FFP and a certain Russian's current quick-on-the drawn purse strings puts a curb on any easystreet spend up. After that, the appliance of Sarribal science, the concurrence [at last] with Roman's youth progression obsession and the answering of my own prayers on the matter, another stab at a starting eleven [with either/ors thrown in for good measure] might visionarily be:-
Azpilicueta/Aina, Rudiger/Rugani, Christensen/Ampadu, Emerson/Alonso, Golovin/Scott, Jorginho/Mount, Kante, Loftus-Cheek/Hazard, Giroud/Abraham, Martial/Hudson-Odoi.
By all means dissect and deride my teams as you think fit (yes big blue, we know, you don't think that Kyle Scott, the Alexandr Golovin look [and play] alike, will make it here) but constants are there for all to see in Dave, Tony, N'Golo and Edin and the rest, though a mix of pure speculation and wishful thinking on my part, have grains of truth sown into the very fabric when choosing players best equipped to play the type of Sarriball that our limited conceptual knowledge initially allows us to make a call on. Naturally, snap decisions are bound to be made on the ability of other players to meet basic Sarriball requirements and also judgement calls made on the levels of burning desire to adapt when other career paths may look more inviting. I'm no exception, as can be seen by my leaving out David Luiz, Gary Cahill, Davide Zappacosta, Danny Drinkwater, Ross Barkley, Pedro and Willian from the above line-ups. In some instances old dogs may not want to learn new tricks, in others the spirit will be willing but the flesh weak and finally there will be those bargaining chip individuals who see the light of a brighter future or a bigger payday elsewhere.
Whatever the reasons, this summer's comings and goings could and arguably should be cull-like in severity, with the structure and business plan template willingly accepted by all parties, overseen by new manager and board in tandem, with the ultimate aim of providing first team places for far more Development Squad players and returning loanees than ever before. Hopefully, a good World Cup for Ruben Loftus-Cheek, one that might have been even better had he got on in the latter stages of the semi-final, will cement a place for him in the first team and provide an early platform of justification that Sarri will clearly need if he is going to bring in any more youngsters rather than have the club forever splashing the cash on another of those Next Best Things since sliced Fred. That's not to say Sarri should not have funds at his disposal, but simply to limit the amount on a sell-before-buy basis. After all, are we not dealing here with a banking man who understands the need to budget and appreciates the value of money? I do hope so, because nothing would give me greater satisfaction than to see miserly Sarriball suceed at the expense of much-hyped and misconceived Mancunian loadsa-moneyball, if not next season then in the not too distant future.
But in the meantime our new boss must be allowed time to settle in, preach the gospel according to Sarriball and sort the wheat from the chaff playerwise. His arrival could herald a bright new dawn that fulfills the current needs of club and manager, both seemingly having patented a cure for the persistent ills of the other. So, let me provide the pre-partytime introductions - Chelsea, bad boy serial trophy winners, meet Mauricio Sarri, desperately seeking silverware. Mauricio Sarri, fashion football designer to the stars, meet Chelsea FC, identity crisis incorporated and much in need of a makeover... I'm sure you two have got lots to talk about.

Ever since he was an old man
He's played the Serie halls
From Sorento up to Naples
He's hardly played them all
But you ain't seen nothing like him
With or without a trophy haul
That eff'n'blind smokin' banker
Sure plays a mean Sarriball
Well, that didn't take long, did it? And no Pauly, it is not without fully appreciating the irony that I've adapted Elton John's lyrics in the above introduction, but when all is said and (often little of it) done we have to start as we mean to go on, by tackling the facts and fiction unflinchingly:- in short, our new-coach-to-be, Mauricio Sarri, reportedly courts controversy at every turn, as does CFC, as did assorted managers of CFC over the years and if by now we the supporters cannot get used to this backdrop and the Fourth Estate fabrications that always accompany it then we never will. That said, his imminent appointment appears to have divided opinion more than most in recent times, primarily due to him still having a trophyless cabinet on fast approaching his sixtieth year, an unsightly Zorro zed of a zilch etched deep into the very heart of the man, though one that seemed no more than a mere distinguishing mark on the avuncular Claudio Ranieri way back in the early Noughties when the Chelsea bar was set nowhere near as high as it most certainly is now.
So, significantly, no such largesse oiling the wheels of Sarri's coaching career to date, but to his great credit he has sought to make a virtue out of the type of tightwad financial situation many a trophy-hungry managerial big beast would not even countenance, Guardiola, Mourinho, Zidane, to name but three of the bigger bear marketeers to be scooping out of wealthy club honeypots on a regular basis in the last decade. During that self same period Sarri made it abundantly clear he regarded spending vast sums on players as something of a cop out on the coaching side, a stated position that must come as music to Roman's ears, albeit a somewhat obvious stance to take when you are forever strapped for cash in the transfer market. Align this with the Italian's reputation for bringing in numerous youngsters at Empoli, improving them out of all recognition, before melding them with more established players and you sense that now might be just the right time to get the best out of Edin Hazard in a front three with the likes of Callum Hudson-Odoi and Tammy Abraham willing runners intertwined in supporting roles.
Indeed, the same opportunities for mentoring mergers like these are available in almost every position except that of goalkeeper where, with due respect to Willy Caballero, it is Thibaut Courtois who reigns in supreme, if sometimes uncertain, isolation. Yet even here we have seen a vulnerability when it comes to comfort on the ball and distribution under pressure, so personnel change under Sarri may well start between the posts and could be by design rather than the player merely wanting away for personal reasons. Either way, resolution will be easier under a new regime as a new broom always sweeps clean but, if Sarri turns out not to be as radical as many observers believe, that first team selection of outfield players currently at his disposal for the opening game of next season might easily be fashioned into the following formation, familiarity having bred a certain amount of contempt for Bakayoko amongst the fanbase and now set to be sensationally replaced by a Sarriball lynchpin called Jorginho:-
Azpilicueta, Rudiger, Christensen, Alonso, Jorginho, Kante, Fabregas, Moses, Giroud, Hazard.
Cue disbelief and Manc snubbery all round and I would even go so far as to say 'might easily' advisedly because I doubt the team will look anything like this once a suitable technique-seeking Sarri [wrecking] ball thuds into its facade and reveals the current Conte-suffering, shabby-chic look that's decidedly unfit for purpose in its present distressed state. After such a demolition job a better stab at a starting line-up might well be:-
Azpilicueta, Rudiger, Rugani, Emerson, Jorginho, Kante, Golovin, Bailey, Martial, Hazard.
Hey big spenders, happy days!! Then again, I say 'might well' advisedly because, at the risk of repeating myself twice over, I doubt the team will look anything like this once financial restraint in the form of FFP and a certain Russian's current quick-on-the drawn purse strings puts a curb on any easystreet spend up. After that, the appliance of Sarribal science, the concurrence [at last] with Roman's youth progression obsession and the answering of my own prayers on the matter, another stab at a starting eleven [with either/ors thrown in for good measure] might visionarily be:-
Azpilicueta/Aina, Rudiger/Rugani, Christensen/Ampadu, Emerson/Alonso, Golovin/Scott, Jorginho/Mount, Kante, Loftus-Cheek/Hazard, Giroud/Abraham, Martial/Hudson-Odoi.
By all means dissect and deride my teams as you think fit (yes big blue, we know, you don't think that Kyle Scott, the Alexandr Golovin look [and play] alike, will make it here) but constants are there for all to see in Dave, Tony, N'Golo and Edin and the rest, though a mix of pure speculation and wishful thinking on my part, have grains of truth sown into the very fabric when choosing players best equipped to play the type of Sarriball that our limited conceptual knowledge initially allows us to make a call on. Naturally, snap decisions are bound to be made on the ability of other players to meet basic Sarriball requirements and also judgement calls made on the levels of burning desire to adapt when other career paths may look more inviting. I'm no exception, as can be seen by my leaving out David Luiz, Gary Cahill, Davide Zappacosta, Danny Drinkwater, Ross Barkley, Pedro and Willian from the above line-ups. In some instances old dogs may not want to learn new tricks, in others the spirit will be willing but the flesh weak and finally there will be those bargaining chip individuals who see the light of a brighter future or a bigger payday elsewhere.
Whatever the reasons, this summer's comings and goings could and arguably should be cull-like in severity, with the structure and business plan template willingly accepted by all parties, overseen by new manager and board in tandem, with the ultimate aim of providing first team places for far more Development Squad players and returning loanees than ever before. Hopefully, a good World Cup for Ruben Loftus-Cheek, one that might have been even better had he got on in the latter stages of the semi-final, will cement a place for him in the first team and provide an early platform of justification that Sarri will clearly need if he is going to bring in any more youngsters rather than have the club forever splashing the cash on another of those Next Best Things since sliced Fred. That's not to say Sarri should not have funds at his disposal, but simply to limit the amount on a sell-before-buy basis. After all, are we not dealing here with a banking man who understands the need to budget and appreciates the value of money? I do hope so, because nothing would give me greater satisfaction than to see miserly Sarriball suceed at the expense of much-hyped and misconceived Mancunian loadsa-moneyball, if not next season then in the not too distant future.
But in the meantime our new boss must be allowed time to settle in, preach the gospel according to Sarriball and sort the wheat from the chaff playerwise. His arrival could herald a bright new dawn that fulfills the current needs of club and manager, both seemingly having patented a cure for the persistent ills of the other. So, let me provide the pre-partytime introductions - Chelsea, bad boy serial trophy winners, meet Mauricio Sarri, desperately seeking silverware. Mauricio Sarri, fashion football designer to the stars, meet Chelsea FC, identity crisis incorporated and much in need of a makeover... I'm sure you two have got lots to talk about.

Ever since he was an old man
He's played the Serie halls
From Sorento up to Naples
He's hardly played them all
But you ain't seen nothing like him
With or without a trophy haul
That eff'n'blind smokin' banker
Sure plays a mean Sarriball
Well, that didn't take long, did it? And no Pauly, it is not without fully appreciating the irony that I've adapted Elton John's lyrics in the above introduction, but when all is said and (often little of it) done we have to start as we mean to go on, by tackling the facts and fiction unflinchingly:- in short, our new-coach-to-be, Mauricio Sarri, reportedly courts controversy at every turn, as does CFC, as did assorted managers of CFC over the years and if by now we the supporters cannot get used to this backdrop and the Fourth Estate fabrications that always accompany it then we never will. That said, his imminent appointment appears to have divided opinion more than most in recent times, primarily due to him still having a trophyless cabinet on fast approaching his sixtieth year, an unsightly Zorro zed of a zilch etched deep into the very heart of the man, though one that seemed no more than a mere distinguishing mark on the avuncular Claudio Ranieri way back in the early Noughties when the Chelsea bar was set nowhere near as high as it most certainly is now.
So, significantly, no such largesse oiling the wheels of Sarri's coaching career to date, but to his great credit he has sought to make a virtue out of the type of tightwad financial situation many a trophy-hungry managerial big beast would not even countenance, Guardiola, Mourinho, Zidane, to name but three of the bigger bear marketeers to be scooping out of wealthy club honeypots on a regular basis in the last decade. During that self same period Sarri made it abundantly clear he regarded spending vast sums on players as something of a cop out on the coaching side, a stated position that must come as music to Roman's ears, albeit a somewhat obvious stance to take when you are forever strapped for cash in the transfer market. Align this with the Italian's reputation for bringing in numerous youngsters at Empoli, improving them out of all recognition, before melding them with more established players and you sense that now might be just the right time to get the best out of Edin Hazard in a front three with the likes of Callum Hudson-Odoi and Tammy Abraham willing runners intertwined in supporting roles.
Indeed, the same opportunities for mentoring mergers like these are available in almost every position except that of goalkeeper where, with due respect to Willy Caballero, it is Thibaut Courtois who reigns in supreme, if sometimes uncertain, isolation. Yet even here we have seen a vulnerability when it comes to comfort on the ball and distribution under pressure, so personnel change under Sarri may well start between the posts and could be by design rather than the player merely wanting away for personal reasons. Either way, resolution will be easier under a new regime as a new broom always sweeps clean but, if Sarri turns out not to be as radical as many observers believe, that first team selection of outfield players currently at his disposal for the opening game of next season might easily be fashioned into the following formation, familiarity having bred a certain amount of contempt for Bakayoko amongst the fanbase and now set to be sensationally replaced by a Sarriball lynchpin called Jorginho:-
Azpilicueta, Rudiger, Christensen, Alonso, Jorginho, Kante, Fabregas, Moses, Giroud, Hazard.
Cue disbelief and Manc snubbery all round and I would even go so far as to say 'might easily' advisedly because I doubt the team will look anything like this once a suitable technique-seeking Sarri [wrecking] ball thuds into its facade and reveals the current Conte-suffering, shabby-chic look that's decidedly unfit for purpose in its present distressed state. After such a demolition job a better stab at a starting line-up might well be:-
Azpilicueta, Rudiger, Rugani, Emerson, Jorginho, Kante, Golovin, Bailey, Martial, Hazard.
Hey big spenders, happy days!! Then again, I say 'might well' advisedly because, at the risk of repeating myself twice over, I doubt the team will look anything like this once financial restraint in the form of FFP and a certain Russian's current quick-on-the drawn purse strings puts a curb on any easystreet spend up. After that, the appliance of Sarribal science, the concurrence [at last] with Roman's youth progression obsession and the answering of my own prayers on the matter, another stab at a starting eleven [with either/ors thrown in for good measure] might visionarily be:-
Azpilicueta/Aina, Rudiger/Rugani, Christensen/Ampadu, Emerson/Alonso, Golovin/Scott, Jorginho/Mount, Kante, Loftus-Cheek/Hazard, Giroud/Abraham, Martial/Hudson-Odoi.
By all means dissect and deride my teams as you think fit (yes big blue, we know, you don't think that Kyle Scott, the Alexandr Golovin look [and play] alike, will make it here) but constants are there for all to see in Dave, Tony, N'Golo and Edin and the rest, though a mix of pure speculation and wishful thinking on my part, have grains of truth sown into the very fabric when choosing players best equipped to play the type of Sarriball that our limited conceptual knowledge initially allows us to make a call on. Naturally, snap decisions are bound to be made on the ability of other players to meet basic Sarriball requirements and also judgement calls made on the levels of burning desire to adapt when other career paths may look more inviting. I'm no exception, as can be seen by my leaving out David Luiz, Gary Cahill, Davide Zappacosta, Danny Drinkwater, Ross Barkley, Pedro and Willian from the above line-ups. In some instances old dogs may not want to learn new tricks, in others the spirit will be willing but the flesh weak and finally there will be those bargaining chip individuals who see the light of a brighter future or a bigger payday elsewhere.
Whatever the reasons, this summer's comings and goings could and arguably should be cull-like in severity, with the structure and business plan template willingly accepted by all parties, overseen by new manager and board in tandem, with the ultimate aim of providing first team places for far more Development Squad players and returning loanees than ever before. Hopefully, a good World Cup for Ruben Loftus-Cheek, one that might have been even better had he got on in the latter stages of the semi-final, will cement a place for him in the first team and provide an early platform of justification that Sarri will clearly need if he is going to bring in any more youngsters rather than have the club forever splashing the cash on another of those Next Best Things since sliced Fred. That's not to say Sarri should not have funds at his disposal, but simply to limit the amount on a sell-before-buy basis. After all, are we not dealing here with a banking man who understands the need to budget and appreciates the value of money? I do hope so, because nothing would give me greater satisfaction than to see miserly Sarriball suceed at the expense of much-hyped and misconceived Mancunian loadsa-moneyball, if not next season then in the not too distant future.
But in the meantime our new boss must be allowed time to settle in, preach the gospel according to Sarriball and sort the wheat from the chaff playerwise. His arrival could herald a bright new dawn that fulfills the current needs of club and manager, both seemingly having patented a cure for the persistent ills of the other. So, let me provide the pre-partytime introductions - Chelsea, bad boy serial trophy winners, meet Mauricio Sarri, desperately seeking silverware. Mauricio Sarri, fashion football designer to the stars, meet Chelsea FC, identity crisis incorporated and much in need of a makeover... I'm sure you two have got lots to talk about.