For whatever reason, Chelsea fans need a scapegoat. Maurizio Sarri has come out in support of almost every one of them in a recent interview.
Once upon a time it was John Obi Mikel. For a long time, it was Branislav Ivanovic. Gary Cahill practically always has been despite his ability to fight his way into a starting lineup manager after manager. All of these players have been scapegoats by Chelsea fans because for whatever reason someone must be consistently blamed for everything.
The club has several of these scapegoats currently. David Luiz, Willian, and Alvaro Morata are frequently top of the list. Ross Barkley was too before he started to show some semblance of a turnaround and then he became England’s golden boy for journalists who think he is a starter over Mateo Kovacic.
All of these players, at some point in their Chelsea career, earned their scapegoat status. This does not come from thin air (well, it frequently does after they have already been deemed scapegoats). But Maurizio Sarri has recently come out in support of almost every common scapegoat for the Blues.
Luiz “surprised” Sarri with his cleverness. Willian is “perfect” for the Premier League. Morata is sensible and “quality”. One would be hard pressed to find fans saying anything similar on forums or Twitter. In fact, they say quite the opposite.
And this is not a case of Sarri simply saying nice things about the players because he is expected to. Sarri has more than proven he will go after players in less than savory ways while keeping a calm and measured demeanor about it. In every public speaking moment, Sarri has been nothing if not genuine.
So why the discrepancy between fans and the manager? The lazy excuse will be that Sarri sees them every day in training so he knows their value. The more nuanced excuse is that Sarri is looking at different things than the fans. Fans look at Willian and see a player who cannot score or assist. Sarri sees a hard working player who creates space and chances indirectly in ways that do not show up on the stats sheet.
But, on the same notion, the fans could be seeing a side of things that Sarri is not. After all, one can only see things from their own viewpoint. Willian and Luiz’s positions are easily the weakest spots on the team while Morata clearly needs to produce more than he has been producing.
Sarri considers himself more coach than manager and sees the good qualities of these players he can mold. Fans see their bad qualities and what can never be fixed. Ultimately, both sides are important but both must be kept within the context of one another. A player can be bad at one thing and good at another and either or could fail to turn into a stat to show off. The game is full of actions that never show up on a stats sheet and that is largely where the discrepancy between Sarri and the fans comes from.
Sarri’s words on these players is unlikely to change their scapegoat status. But it does help to show how the window in which they are viewed shapes perceptions and can in turn shape their Chelsea futures.