Chelsea’s last game against Manchester City was the outrage of no return for many fans with respect to Antonio Conte. The loss itself was only a small part of the problem.
By time Chelsea fell to Manchester City on March 4, their fans were quite inured to such things: City handed the Blues their fourth loss in the last five Premier League games and, just the week before, the other side of Manchester sent the Blues home with nothing.
Generously, the issue with the loss against Manchester City was the tactics. More accurately, it was the aesthetics. The margin of defeat was the same as against Manchester United the preceding week and was much better than the 3-0 and 4-1 losses to 12th-place Bournemouth and 11th-place Watford a month earlier. But whereas the Blues has the majority of possession (overwhelming so against Bournemouth) and the advantage in shots in the first three losses, against City the Blues had 29% of the ball, three shots and zero on target.
This game led to one of the more bizarre outpourings of banter this writer has ever seen in any sport in response to a loss (and if you know anything about professional sports in Buffalo, New York, USA from 1988-1999, you’ll know I’ve seen it all).
In the course of excoriating Antonio Conte for his defensive tactics, Chelsea fans proclaimed they would rather lose by a large margin as long as they did so playing “beautiful attacking football” than lose 1-0 with eight men behind the ball. They received top cover from such intellectual luminaries as Jamie Redknapp, who declared the game “a crime against football.”
The scorelines of Manchester City’s preceding league games – 3-0 over Arsenal, 5-1 over Leicester, 3-0 over West Brom – were supposedly preferable than Chelsea’s 1-0 defeat or – one would suppose, since it was never mentioned – Burnley’s 1-1 draw, achieved with a similar, Dyche-an approach. Anything closer to or in excess of Manchester City’s average two-goal margin of victory would have been better, as long as the Blues came out of their third to get it.
Well, football is like democracy. It gives the people what they want, and sometimes they get it good and hard. Antonio Conte is gone, Maurizio Sarri has Chelsea playing some form of Sarrismo, the Blues average 63% possession this season and Pep Guardiola is bringing his Cityzens to Stamford Bridge on Saturday.
Among the many terrifying aspects of Manchester City is how they are only slightly compromised by not having Sergio Aguero, Benjamin Mendy or Kevin de Bruyne available for the match. This means they will only have Raheem Sterling, who leads the Premier League in goals created; Leroy Sane, who can outrun most anyone in Blue; David Silva, who has more goals than assists for only the second time in his career; Ederson, the man whose outlet passes put most playmakers to shame; Riyad Mahrez, I mean, do I need to keep going here?
Maurizio Sarri has repeatedly said he has no interest in pragmatically adapting his tactics to the opponent or the situation. His actions have so far backed up his words. Pep Guardiola could really care less if his opponent wants 30% or 70% of the ball. His side will know what to do. And they will do it.
One of those trifling details lost to time about last March’s game against Manchester City was how well the Blues stifled City. City had only three shots on target, and eight total. That was the fewest shots on target Chelsea conceded in those four losses we mentioned above – the two Manchester’s, Bournemouth and Watford – despite / because of the lopsided possession and control numbers.
Three shots on target were also the fewest City had taken in any Premier League fixture to that point in the season. Over those same 28 matchweeks, they had scored three or more goals in 16 games.
After Chelsea’s games against Tottenham and Wolves, and accounting for the experience of the two teams under their respective managers, a 1-0 result in either direction could be considered a stunning upset. Given those factors, the scoreline is much more likely to favour Manchester City’s trends than Chelsea’s.
Maurizio Sarri wants football to be fun for himself, the players and the fans. And the fans wanted him to bring just that. Suffer-ball out, Sarri-ball in. Tomorrow could be the moment we find out what the fans really want this club to be. They spent last year coveting aesthetics over results. Money, meet mouth.