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Sarri-ball - the four act play reviewed.


Dorset
Eton Blue at the Chelsea Megastore

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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.


 

Edited by Dorset
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2 hours ago, Dorset said:

 

The Cons:-

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?.

 

His days were numbered 9 months ago, i won't go over the figures, but in the last 9 months Alonso has probably scored more goals than Alvaro. I cant believe we have cleared the decks with strikers to give Alvaro plenty of breathing space, what the hell were we thinking ? 

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Nice article. Thank you.

The midfield is the hardest puzzle to solve. We have three players in there who are all of the required calibre but the group is not balanced. Both Jorgi and Mat want to support the play from behind the ball. Get it, give it hover for a ball played backwards. This forces Sari to use N'Golo as the one tasked with breaking forward. He does it but it's not his natural game. Given the current squad, going with those three is an easy choice but from January onward, faced with opportunities to fine tune the squad to take it where we want it to go, there will be some tough decisions ahead.

Edited by OhForAGreavsie
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I can see Christensen coming in for Luiz and Ampadu being the go to guy to replace Jorginho for EL and Carbao cup games.

Ampadu is so cool under pressure and can keep things ticking over nicely, not to Joringhos levels but of all the potential CMs to play in there, I'd prefer him to over all of them really, even Cesc, Ampadu has the legs to cover and make a tackle all the while being good on the ball.

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