Argo

Four games away from the end of the league and we are 4 points of last seasons total, you would think/hope we will at the very worst match it. Add to the fact this season has been a massive culture shift in the club, most of the first team didn't arrive till 1 week before the league started and we have had Europa distractions all season (added to a league cup final run has meant a brutal schedule which has lead to high match turnover basically all season). Right now i think Sarri has should get the benefit of the doubt given what I've listed above. That said there's some aspects he needs a big improvement on. His tactics on big and even 2nd tier away games, our results have not been good enough and the way we capitulate at times is beyond pale, his big game away results at Napoli were pretty good iirc so he needs to translate that to here because we can't have anymore humiliations. His squad management was a big concern of mine 2 months ago but recently he seems to have improved a lot on that score, only Azpi is really getting "flogged" to the level we feared our entire starting Xl would be at this stage, hopefully this is a sign he's learning to better utilize his squad. All in all i want to see where giving him a second season alongside a proper pre season will take us, if we get to October and still no progress or worse we go backwards then okay bye bye, we won't be winning the league next season so it's worth a roll of the dice.

Problem was, apart from that 10 minute spell after the second goal, all our openings came on the break, in theory it sounds better but in practice we would have just had the ball coming back at us because OG couldn't get up on time, think the Cup final last season when we allowed a Jose team to dominate possession. He should have come on instead of Higuain but starting a player without any pace would have been suicide given our game plan.

I remember before the cup final the narrative was "no way will Conte lead us to victory given his record in cups and Jose's record in finals".

I'm sorry but i completely disagree. He may have got the gametime at Palace but he returned the same extremely flawed player that left. He wasn't making any regular impact on a game, was a defensively non existant and had very poor decision making. Sarri got to work on developing him from the get go and in the last couple of months especially it's started to seriously pay off, he's so much better off the ball and (most importantly for me) shows for it himself more and is willing to take more reponsibilty in the game. Even if Sarri goes all 15/16 on us next season, he deserves credit for Ruben's rise this season.

I meant the first time, he was a very clever tactican back then. Guardiola, Wenger and Benitez were all left trailing in their wake, I'm convinced we would have got revenge on United in Rome heck i would have actually even have fancied us to beat Mou's Inter the following season had Guus remained.

If Cal is still not ready for such high profile games i would rather roll out Willian and Pedro (or their replacements) till he is. It's not really about who's better but more who has more to lose by being poor, Pedro and Willy have had their days in the sun so even if they stink out the rest of the games in their career it means little in the grand scheme of things, if CHO keeps ghosting big games at some point self doubt will creep in which is a very dangerous ball game for a youngster, case in point, look at how Christensen's horror shows against Barcax2, United and City in short time affected him. I've got every faith in CHO long term, but i don't think throwing him in such high profile games rn is doing wonders for his development because he's looked lost against pretty much everyone's he's faced from Wolves/Watford upwards.

I would switch Carlo for Hiddink, i felt the formers strength was more man management than tactical.

Maybe i overemphasized a bit by saying with ease but i think your assessment is a bit harsh, i have been very impressed with a lot of our play out of trouble, something that will hopefully get more exposure if/when we stop wasting the corresponding attacks.

No one's throwing him under a bus, however given he handed in a transfer request and fans want him to be a starter then he should get assessed as one and by those standards he wasn't good enough yesterday, not even remotely close.

You're totally taking my words out of context. For a start it was only a small part of my initial post. We use to struggle against any form of high pressing , even in our title winning sides it was a weakness (look how a ten man Paris strangled the life out of our 2015 title winning side). It's quite funny because I remember when a clip came out of his Napoli side expertly playing out of defense this place nearly crashed due to the amount of people raving about it and wishing we could do it now we do it like clockwork it's somehow still spun into a negative.

Even Liverpool fans I was with for the game were praising us for how well we were playing out in the first half and after the reverse fixture said we done it better than even City ever did against them. Of course when you apply tactics which in layman terms is don't hoof unless you are completely boxed in mistakes will happen on occasion, they even did to Pep's Barca, but I've constantly pinpointed out the times we have played out well this season to people because I honestly thought that was the aspect of Sarri tactics that would take the longest.

In terms of consistency absolutely, they are looking extremely well placed to match or better our 04/05 total, have the best defence probably since the days of us and United fighting it out with JT/Carvalho and Rio/Vidic and in terms of how well they work together you could make a case for them having the most fearsome front three in football save for PSG's. Midfield is their only real weakness but Klopp's style means any exposure to that is minimul. I hate that club more than any other, but the reality is they are very much up there on the pitch.

If that's aimed at me I don't think anyone's a lesser fan for wanting him out and I apologize if it looked like I implied anything in that direction. I do think (from my experience) there is a general case of stubbornness with the average Chelsea fan and I think Sarri has to do something spectacular to win over the most stubborn section over, for example I also believe there would still be Mourinho chanting to this day had Conte not blew him out of the water which showed we made the correct decision.

Don't think it's as bad as the Scolari era, in that period we were losing home and away to big teams and I think our home record against top ten sides wasn't much better than our away record against similar sides currently. For now I'll put the away defeats to a learning curve of the new system, but those results must be improved upon next season.

I don't doubt a lot has been justified and I have criticized at times myself (mentality especially which is why I was actually pleasently surprised at our immediate reaction to going two down), but I feel there's a big case of mental gymnastics going on which is making him the villian of the piece for everything. I even came across someone not long again ignoring CHO's recent spout of appearances which include a cup final and trying to pass them off as an odd ten minutes here and there. I think it's a bit harsh blaming losing our Anfield record on him, in a one off game a record is vaunlrable to getting broken even if the team on the right side of that record is vastly superior, for example we lost a near two decade unbeaten league record at WHL under Mourinho the first time round.