Ruud Gullit said Willian and Eden Hazard avoid playing the ball to Alvaro Morata because they do not trust him. Gullit’s point is debatable, but if true, Maurizio Sarri must assert himself over the situation.
Ruud Gullit pointed to Willian’s and Eden Hazard’s passing, dribbling and play-making to support his claim that Chelsea’s wingers are keeping the play away from Alvaro Morata due to his recent inability to finish. While there may be some moments where the wingers could have done more to bring Alvaro into the play, they did not marginalize Morata compared to previous games nor compared to how they work with Olivier Giroud.
Willian completed 18% of his total number of passes to Morata. This is the highest percentage of his passes that he has played to either centre-forward this season. Hazard, likewise, completed 8.9% of his passes to Morata. Only in the fixture against Cardiff City did Hazard provide the ball more to the No. 9: 10.5% of his passes that day went to Giroud.
The numbers alone do not speak to the quality or context of the passes. They may have passed the ball to Alvaro Morata only as a last resort, using the striker as a recycle option or an outlet rather than as part of a purposeful build-up.
However, such auxiliary passes to Olivier Giroud are driving the narrative (one which we mostly support) of him finding success for Chelsea and France as the “non-scoring striker.” Giroud is in a supporting role for Kylian Mbappe, Antoine Griezmann and Eden Hazard. The passes his wingers send to him are not meant for him to turn and bang into the net. He is there to hold-up play, create space, return the ball on a one-two and pull defenders out of position. Giroud is much more effective than Alvaro Morata at these roles. But as we have discussed here many times, Morata succeeds at his own list of auxiliary roles that are much different from Giroud’s. Yet the double-standard continues: Giroud is praised for his goalless work, Morata is excoriated for his.
Ruud Gullit also attributed Hazard’s and Willian’s tendency to dribble inside to their distrust of Morata. If that is their motivation, they have been mistrusting Morata long before he was even a Chelsea transfer target.
Hazard, in particular, needs little extra invitation to dribble inside. As our newest colleague Abdulazeez Abdulrafiu noted Saturday, Hazard continues to lead the team in dribbles but with far fewer per game than last season. If anything, Hazard is creating less via dribbles and key passes in favour of shooting more. That could make a compelling argument for how Hazard is taking the ball off of Morata’s foot, but the results encourage him to do so. Is Eden Hazard shooting more because he does not trust Alvaro Morata, or because his shots are finding the net so regularly? Where does the egg end and the chicken begin?
But let’s take Ruud Gullit’s statement at face value. Doing so brings us twice to Maurizio Sarri. Sarrismo is a very winger-centric formation, especially in his last two years at Napoli. Chelsea’s wingers have more in common with Napoli’s wingers – Dries Mertens and Lorenzo Insigne – than either striker has with Napoli’s last proper striker, Gonzalo Higuain. The overall movement and thrust of Sarrismo emphasizes the wingers. Given that one of the wingers is Eden Hazard, it may be by design that Chelsea’s play appears to circumvent Alvaro Morata in favour of Eden Hazard (and, to a lesser extent, Willian).
If, though, Eden Hazard and Willian are truly avoiding Alvaro Morata, Maurizio Sarri needs to step in. For starters, Chelsea need all 11 men involved in the play, particularly against teams like Manchester United. Willian and Hazard would be placing Chelsea at an immediate disadvantage by cutting out another player – another forward, no less – from the build-up.
Doing so is also another form of insubordinate player power. If Maurizio Sarri does not want Alvaro Morata on the ball, he should send on Olivier Giroud or use Ross Barkley as a false-nine (having already ruled out Hazard as a false-nine). Sarri would not put Alvaro Morata – or any other player – on the pitch just to make up numbers. Sarri sends Morata out there as part of a strategy. It’s up to the entire squad to execute that strategy.
Sarri trusts his players to make the right pitch-level decisions, but this would be too far. Again, assuming Gullit is right, if Sarri agrees with the wingers’ actions than he needs to end Morata’s time in the XI. If he disagrees with them he needs to put them in their place and remind them of the role of the centre-forward in Chelsea’s Sarrismo. Other than Morata and Giroud, there are no other options until January. People need to make their peace now with anything that upsets them.
Finally, Chelsea are in their brief, new manager honeymoon period where everyone supports everyone else. Maurizio Sarri patched over some fractures in the locker room, and new ones have not yet sprouted.
The players have been nothing but supportive of Alvaro Morata during his goalless struggles. His and the team’s reaction to his goal in the Europa League shows how much his goal meant to all of them. They know they are better as a team when their striker is scoring, so they would not want to do anything to undermine that possibility.
Maurizio Sarri has a lot to figure out with Alvaro Morata: tactics, confidence boosting exercises and matchday squads. He is the only one who should be making the decision to exclude Morata, not the players on the pitch. Fortunately, no one seems to be doing that.