Chelsea have Eden Hazard on the mend and several others on empty tanks. Maurizio Sarri should not take any risks with his players when he names his squad for BATE Borisov.
Chelsea need four points from their remaining three Europa League games to seal Group L mathematically. And that’s the hardest case-scenario. If a few games between the other teams in the group end in draws, the Blues’ magic number will be even lower. Not that they want to, but Chelsea could limp, sneak and slither their way to finishing atop their group and into the theoretically easier draw for the Round of 32.
A win at BATE Borisov would remove almost all possibility of finishing second. Maurizio Sarri may feel a certain drive or urgency to wrap things up as quickly as possible – get the Europa League off his plate, rotate heavily in the dead rubber games and put all his tactical and man-management efforts towards the festive season. As appealing as this may sound, it would be another act of short-sightedness to risk key players simply to accelerate a nearly foregone conclusion.
As we have all seen, Maurizio Sarri likes a very generous margin of comfort before the slightest deviations from the norm. In the home game against BATE he did not withdraw his starting wingers until Chelsea had a three-goal lead. He then went so far as to bring on N’Golo Kante to see out the win. In the first two Europa League games he stayed with a highly experienced starting XI and substitutes, despite the vast quality gap between the Blues and their opponents.
But the wide margin of comfort becomes the knife’s edge in terms of player fatigue. Sarri is so risk averse he barely wavers from the same squad of players. He makes the minimal tactical and personnel changes between and within games. Those changes are in response to limited, specific stimuli – they are never proactive, experimental nor long-range in their intent.
While Chelsea have lost few man-games to injury this season, the risks of fatigue are building up. Willian has started the last 10 games, stretching back to mid-September. Four outfield players have played every minute of Premier League football. Antonio Rudiger and Jorginho have been exempted from only 21 and 22 minutes, respectively.
Eden Hazard is still recovering from the back injury that kept him out of the squad against Burnley and out of the starting XI against Crystal Palace. He is still doubtful for this weekend against Everton.
Maurizio Sarri should leave Hazard in London for the Europa League. Chelsea should not need Eden Hazard to defeat BATE Borisov. If they do, their troubles run far deeper than fatigue, rotation and Hazard’s back. But if they do, Sarri should consider whether a win against BATE Borisov via Eden Hazard is worth facing Everton and potentially other future Premier League opponents without him.
The travel alone is more than Eden Hazard needs right now. No matter how much the sports medicine team were able to contribute to the custom design of Chelsea’s team plane, several hours in the air is not good for anyone’s back. If Hazard goes and doesn’t play, his body absorbed the travel and jet lag for no good reason. If he goes and does play, Sarri is putting him at risk in a game that essentially comes with two do-overs in the form of the remaining group stage game.
The riskiest thing Maurizio Sarri can do is set out to win in Belarus by any means necessary. Chelsea should not be satisfied with anything less than a win. But Sarri must know what price he is willing to pay for a win, and ask himself why he would need a Premier League-calibre squad to defeat BATE.
Europa League Group L is quite a bit less competitive than the Premier League. Barring the kind of collapse that seeps into every other competition, a draw or even loss against BATE will not have much effect on Chelsea’s Europa League prospects, let alone the domestic competitions. What happens in Borisov, stays in Borisov.
The loss of a best XI player, on the other hand, will have immediate and potentially season-long effects. There’s a lot of football left to be played in four competitions after Chelsea return home from Belarus. Maurizio Sarri must consider who he needs for this season when he thinks about who he needs for Thursday.