The winter slog can make or break Maurizio Sarri’s Chelsea

Chelsea managers have started hotly only to be undone by the winter months. Will Maurizio Sarri make or break during the slog?

One of the reasons why the Premier League is dubbed one of the toughest leagues in the world is because of the winter schedule. For top clubs in all competitions, the period between the end of the November break and the start of the March break can see a club play every weekend and once during the week. This strains even the best squads.

Pep Guardiola and Jurgen Klopp have both struggled during these periods. The season as a whole can very much be made during the winter just as easily as it can be broken. Chelsea managers such as Andre Villas Boas and Antonio Conte have entered the winter on a high and left it in a tail spin.

Maurizio Sarri will be new to this type of intense schedule. And though he is beginning it in a favorable position, he can just as easily end it in a very unfavorable one. The Chelsea manager will need to be at his best to see the squad through and make the season.

Largely, this period will come down to rotation. Sarri has been rotating by the letter of the word but not necessarily by the spirit of it. Some players, such as Callum Hudson-Odoi and Ethan Ampadu, have been left in the cold as other players play back to back games.

Sarri’s intense style of football (which is still a work in progress) does not allow for many back to back games. It takes a true physical juggernaut like N’Golo Kante to do so and the Blues lack players with that kind of engine. Rotation, by the spirit and the letter, will be crucial to pulling the Blues through.

Furthermore, the massive amount of games creates a vastly larger sample size rapidly. Opponents will suddenly be swamped with recent game tape of Chelsea to watch and plan a way to counter the Blues. Of course, Sarri and his men will get the same benefit.

Tactically, Sarri will need to show some flexibility over the period. It is alluring to believe the squad can play beautiful attacking football every three or four days without having to adjust. But the reality is that some opponents will make it a slug fest in the winter. Points are often lost by the bigger teams during this period because they fail to adjust to a plucky underdog.

But if Sarri can play things smart and get the Blues through the winter, they could remain in all four competitions with a strong chance of winning them all. The Premier League is a free for all currently but many will fall off during the winter. The FA Cup does not start till the end of the winter (for Chelsea) and the League Cup is already within touching distance. Europa League will start back up at the end of the period and Chelsea can push on from there.

Sarri has proven himself a very capable manager so far. But at this point in the season last year, Conte still looked like the ideal Chelsea manager. Winter has a way of flipping the script if one is not careful and Sarri will need to do his utmost to prevent that situation.