Chelsea fans and pundits continue to urge patience as the club slowly becomes everything that they made fun of with Arsenal for years.
“How can you give up on Maurizio Sarri so early? Even Pep Guardiola needed time!” is one of the laziest ideas going around the Chelsea fan base currently. In an attempt to deflect any and all valid criticism, this phrase is used as a way to end the conversation and to urge patience and understanding.
The phrase ignores almost all the key points though. Sarri wishes he were in the same situation that Guardiola was in. Guardiola had almost a decade’s worth of successful resume to point to; Sarri arguably has three years of “improvement”. Manchester City built their infrastructure and team for years to court Guardiola while Sarri came into a team that was a Frankenstein’s monster of several managers’ wish lists. Not to mention Guardiola had vastly greater resources heading into year two that Sarri is all but sure not to have.
Somewhere along the line, “playing the right way” or “playing beautifully” beat out plain old winning at Chelsea. Maurizio Sarri has more in common with Arsene Wenger than he does Guardiola. And slowly but surely, Chelsea, as a club and a fan base, is starting to look a lot like the Arsenal team they made fun of for the last 15 plus years.
Make no mistake; this is not to say Sarri is a bad manager or does not deserve time. But he does not deserve it in the context that Guardiola got time. That is important to understand before going forward.
Guardiola’s first season was not perfect. But it is one of the greatest myth’s going around Premier League fans that he stuck to his way until it eventually worked. Guardiola adapted to the league he was in like any good manager does. The overall philosophy and system remained the same, but small tweaks allowed the weaknesses exposed by Premier League teams to be covered.
Sarri has not shown that adaptability in any way, shape, or form. He has rigidly stuck to his zonal defensive, regista based 4-3-3 with the same players over and over again. As these issues have been exposed in nearly every match since the Burnley match, rather than find a solution he has stuck to his way. This is where he becomes more like Wenger.
Wenger was well known for having Arsenal play “his way” and nothing else. Chelsea fans were very much on the front of making fun of that. Football, despite everything else, is a game about winning. Playing one way or another is a means to an end but it is not the end. It seemed that Wenger never understood that until it was too late.
Sarri seems just as dogmatic about his way. This is not a tale of two losses but a tale of the same problems happening again and again and eventually two teams capitalized on them. All while Sarri took a step away from the tire fire and stuck to his way.
Yes, Sarri does need a plan B. This is an often disregarded criticism by those who say he needs time like Guardiola. But a plan B does not mean going from attacking football to defensive football. It means, given the issues, finding the solution to fall back on that covers the issues.
There are two ways to do this. One way is to change the shape. Many have called for a 4-2-3-1, which could work but it could also shift the problems around. The other option is to change the players. Not just in rotation, but as a means of competition.
The latter is probably the best path towards a plan B and the one Sarri has been most hesitant to actually do. Changing players while keeping the same overall set up is a valid plan B. But Sarri very much has a preferred XI and everyone knows it. And that stops competition in the squad so the entire team stagnates.
Guardiola does this, though he had the resources to build almost two complete starting XI’s. Jurgen Klopp does this not because he has the players for it, but because he knows if a player is sure they will start, they will slack off. This has been the case at Chelsea for years.
And this all might go back to Sarri being a bit of a knee jerk appointment. After Antonio Conte, there was a sense that this squad should play more attacking football. But it is very hard to go from a culture of defense first to offense first right away. This is a trap that smaller clubs fall into all the time. It creates a bump at first, but then the gulf between the two stiles causes a mighty lurch.
Instead, ironically, Chelsea has become a lot like Arsenal as Arsenal has become a lot like Chelsea. Chelsea is suddenly more focused on being silky at the expense of the steel that won them so much over the years. Arsenal is less concerned with looking good and more concerned with winning now. Unai Emery seemed like a random appointment at the time, but he may have just been the transitional manager they needed and the type that Chelsea skipped over to go straight to Sarri.
Again, this is not to say that Sarri is bad. But he needs to show more than he has shown. The Premier League is not a league for managers to come in and shape it to their will. It is a league where successful managers shape themselves to the league. Conte did it and won the league. Guardiola did it and won the league. But the managers like Sarri who try to shape the league to their will? They often come short.
Sarri can stop the rot before the club goes under. The issues have been prevalent for weeks and he needs to show a willingness to do something about them. If he does, he can actually be spoken about in a sentence with Guardiola. If he does not, he belongs in the sentence with Wenger.