Callum Hudson-Odoi became the 23rd player Maurizio Sarri has used in any of Chelsea’s three competitions this season. Forget about playing the youth: Sarri needs to start trusting all of his backup players.
Ruben Loftus-Cheek’s teammates had barely made their way over to congratulate him on his hat trick before Maurizio Sarri was shouting for Victor Moses to strip off his training gear and stand by the fourth official. Four minutes after the goal, Moses was on for Willian. Three minutes after that, Callum Hudson-Odoi replaced Pedro.
The quick one-two between Chelsea’s third goal and Sarri’s first substitution reveals the trigger. As soon as the Blues had a three-goal lead, Sarri had the margin of comfort he required before withdrawing the players from his best XI. He knew he had to get his Premier League regulars off the pitch as soon as possible. Kick-off against Burnley was under 66 hours away, and he did not want Willian and Pedro to accrue any unnecessary minutes. But therein lies the problem: he thought the first hour against BATE Borisov – most of which with a 2-0 lead – were necessary minutes.
Chelsea’s performance against BATE was what they should have had against PAOK Salonika and MOL Vidi. Five places separate PAOK and BATE by UEFA’s club coefficient rankings, leaving them both over 40 spots behind Chelsea. Vidi are 100 places behind them. But after two 1-0 wins, Sarri still demanded a three-goal margin before taking the smallest step beyond his usual rotation-lite.
“Rotation-lite” is the best way to describe Sarri’s midweek squads. He makes 6-8 changes from the Premier League XI, but those changes do not greatly expand the pool of players he uses. Rotation-lite swaps the substitutes for a subset of the starters, but the overall matchday squad is much the same. Nothing these midweek players – not even Gary Cahill, Cesc Fabregas and Andreas Christensen – do can push them any further than the bench on the weekend. This, in turn, means there is nothing a midweek-only substitute can do to leverage a brief appearance into a better place in the overall squad.
As a result, Chelsea have used only 23 players across three competitions this season. The distribution of minutes are heavily skewed to the 14 Premier League regulars. The minutes then trickle down to Callum Hudson-Odoi, who played his first senior minutes of the season off the bench against BATE.
That Maurizio Sarri needed a three-goal margin of safety before being willing to withdraw his Premier League forwards – at least one of whom he would need in 65 hours – speaks to his over-reliance on his core players and his worrisome lack of trust in the rest. If he cannot trust Victor Moses to protect or expand a two goal lead over a second half against BATE Borisov, how will he ever trust Moses to participate in building such a lead from the opening whistle in a future midweek game? Can he only trust Moses in the group stage dead rubbers?
If he cannot trust Moses to build that lead against the 61st, 66th or 162nd teams in Europe, how can he ever turn to Moses against the eighth, 13th or 20th teams in the Premier League?
The 13th-place team in the league is the most relevant here: Burnley, Sunday’s opponent. Eden Hazard is questionable for the game. This partly explains Sarri’s thoroughly-qualified “haste” to withdraw Pedro and Willian on Thursday. One of them would start regardless, and possibly both if Hazard is not available. If only Sarri trusted Victor Moses or Callum Hudson-Odoi to start against BATE, either Willian or Pedro would be fresh for Sunday.
But these questions pale in comparison to this one: Did Hazard’s injury drive the entire substitution scheme?
If Hazard had not picked up this injury, would Sarri have played Moses or Hudson-Odoi at all, especially the latter? Did Sarri only substitute his two wingers before the hour mark – bringing on one teenager in the process – because he knew he may need both Pedro and Willian on Sunday?
Perhaps in Maurizio Sarri’s perfect world, either Pedro or Willian would go the full 90 and the other substitute would be one of the Premier League regulars on the bench. Sarri’s history tells us this may well be the case.
If so, Chelsea are already in a reactive mode. For clubs like Chelsea, the early-round domestic cup and Europa League games have the benefit of letting them expand their squad, give experience to new / young players and experiment with new tactics, lineups and formations. A proactive manager controls his present and his future by rotating his XI and his bench in these lesser matches before he has to. Doing this volitionally makes the weekend squad more resilient by being larger and deeper. Sarri waived this option over the first two Europa League matches and in the Carabao Cup (albeit that was against Liverpool).
By doing so, by being so dependent on his best XI and best XIV and usual matchday squad, Sarri put necessity and fate in the driver seat. They – not he – are determining the squad on Sunday, as they did on Thursday. His options are constrained because he did not expand them when he had the chance.
Sarri’s refusal to play Victor Moses or Callum Hudson-Odoi before the 57′ against BATE forced him – in conjunction with Eden Hazard’s injury – to play them at the 57′ against BATE. Had they been ready to start against the 66th team in Europe- perhaps by cutting their Sarrismo teeth against the 61st or 162nd team in Europe – he would have a variety of options if Hazard cannot play against Burnley.
But as it stands, whatever adjustments he has to make on Sunday to account for Hazard’s injury, Pedro’s and Willian’s fatigue, and Moses’ and Hudson-Odoi’s inexperience and lack of sharpness go back to midweek nights at PAOK, Anfield and Stamford Bridge.