Chelsea manager, Maurizio Sarri complained bitterly at a press conference in the wake of Chelsea’s loss to city rivals, Arsenal. He angrily declared that his group of players were extremely difficult to motivate.
Now, you will admit that it is a manager’s responsibility to motivate his players and if they are not, instead of blaming them, he should take a look at himself and check what he is doing wrong. That would be the appropriate thing to do under normal circumstances.
In Chelsea’s case that may not be entirely correct. Chelsea players have form, this won’t be the first time they will be downing tools when it comes to a manager who doesn’t dance to their tunes. In recent years, they did it to dead man walking, Claudio Ranieri, he was sacked and replaced by Jose Mourinho. They did it to Mourinho twice, he was sacked. They did it to Andre Villas-Boas, they did it to Antonio Conte and now they appear to be doing it to Sarri.
The players seem to continue this trend because they get away with it, because the club’s hierarchy is not afraid to pay compensation to sacked managers, they are more interested in winning trophies. I guess their thinking is if a manager has lost the dressing room and can no longer get the players to play for him and win trophies, he might as well pack his bags and leave.
I would have thought they should also encourage their players to be loyal enough to the club, take pride in wearing the shirt and play for the club rather the manager, all the time. But, hey, if it works, why change?
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Observers however believe Sarri is not without blame in this instance. Although he is quick to say his tactics have nothing to do with recent poor form of his club, this is not entirely true. He is correct when he says it was the same tactics he was using when the club went 18 games unbeaten at the start of the season, but he needs to realise things have since changed.
Sarri perfected the art of playing possession football, using the ball, dominating play and then luring his opponents into a false sense of security before hitting them on the counter with quick fire passes to score goals. The style was so effective in Italy when he was with Napoli that it got its own name-Sarrismo, meaning Sarri-ball.
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It was effective here too at the start of the season before rival managers sussed him out. You can only counter an opponent when he presses forward, if the opponent stays in his own half waiting for you to make a mistake before launching his own counter attack then you become stuck if you don’t have a Plan B. That was why the system was effective against Manchester City but was not against Leicester City.
You can still press against Chelsea and yet still be able to nullify the Sarri-ball effects, all you have to do is man mark the playmaker, Jorginho. That was what Spurs and Arsenal did. Dele Alli marking him for Spurs while Aaron Ramsey did the job for the Gunners.
It doesn’t also help Chelsea when Sarri decided to play his two best players N’Golo Kante and Eden Hazard out of position. It appears that Chelsea’s present predicament cannot be blamed on the manager alone nor on the players. It is a bit of both. You may have the best strategy in the world but if you don’t know your opponents weakness and strength and fashion it accordingly, if you don’t have the players capable of or willing to play the system, it will never work.
One good thing Sarri has got going for him is that it appears Chelsea bosses still have his back, they appear to be still supporting him, this was proved by their approval of getting his favourite striker, Gonzalo Higuainin on loan till the end of the season.
Even then, I am sure he knows he is standing on his last leg if things don’t change for the better, he will be out on his backside before the start of next season.