Chelsea’s up-and-down week will shift – but not settle – ongoing debates

Chelsea turned their week around from a 2-1 loss at Wolves to a 2-0 win over Manchester City. The key elements of each game showed a lot, but prove very little.

Maurizio Sarri changed his lineup to face Wolves and his tactics to face Manchester City. On the surface, the former failed almost as memorably as the latter succeeded. Going back one more game – the home fixture against Fulham – Sarri used the usual players to execute the usual system, for a tediously forgettable 2-0 win over Fulham.

N’Golo Kante’s role has been one of the flashpoints of the season. These three games cycled through many of the arguments for and against him, but without resolving anything. Kante had an assist against Fulham and a goal against Manchester City. Both goals were a direct result of his new positioning as a box-to-box midfielder. He took advantage of a mistake to disposses Jean-Michael Seri, dribbled to the top of the box and fed a pass to Pedro for the goal against Fulham. Kante even followed his pass into the box, ready for a cutback in case Fulham took away Pedro’s shooting lane or for a rebound.

Kante’s goal against Manchester City was a classic box-to-box midfielder’s goal, if only because his late run into the box to latch onto a cutback was something Frank Lampard did dozens of times.

But Kante’s assist against Fulham started with him doing the most Kante thing possible: dispossessing a player by tackling him from behind. The main difference between his tackle on Seri and a couple hundred tackles over the last few years is where he was on the pitch and relative to his teammates.

Similarly, while Kante’s goal against Manchester City indisputably changed the momentum of the game and enabled Chelsea’s tactics and confidence in the second half, Kante’s “throwback” actions throughout the game were every bit as necessary as securing the win. Kante dropped into the defensive midfield spot when Jorginho went high to press. When Manchester City transitioned to attack or were in sustained possession, Kante played much closer to Jorginho than he has in previous games.

Kante patched up the Jorginho-sized weak spot in front of Chelsea’s centre-backs by putting Jorginho under his protective umbrella. Think of it as a cover shadow, but for your own teammate. He anchored the defensive end of his box-to-box role very near Jorginho, which means very near his traditional role.

Maurizio Sarri made his first significant Premier League rotation against Wolves. Cesc Fabregas and Ruben Loftus-Cheek made their first Premier League starts of the season. Andreas Christensen joined them in the starting XI, making his first league appearance under Maurizio Sarri.

Under any reasonable definition of “rotation,” Sarri has been very reluctant to rotate in the Premier League. Some combination of twice-per-week games for a two month stretch, the impending visit of Manchester City, the desire to maybe convince a few players and perhaps a few words from the sports science staff convinced him that matchweek 15 was the time and Molineux was the place.

Loftus-Cheek opened the scoring with Chelsea’s only goal of the night and followed that with a man of the match performance in defeat. Fabregas showed how much better he could execute Chelsea’s offence than Jorginho, even if it deprived Maurizio Sarri of the usual up-tempo passing. Obviously, the Blues were undone by the Wolves, who used their width to outflank Chelsea and disrupt the centre of the pitch.

Wolves’ winning goal needed two Chelsea players’ errors to come together: first Andreas Christensen, and then Willian. That is, a player who had under 600 minutes before the game – all in the lesser competitions – and a player who had over 900 minutes in the Premier League alone under Sarri.

Against Fulham, Wolves and Manchester City Eden Hazard extended his goalless streak to seven Premier League games. But he assisted four of Chelsea’s five goals in the three games last week.

Maurizio Sarri cycled through his forwards over those three games. Alvaro Morata, Olivier Giroud and Eden Hazard all took their turn in the centre of the front line. Willian, Pedro and Hazard rotated through the winger spots, accordingly.

As the false-nine against Manchester City, Eden Hazard was as ineffectual as Chelsea’s true-nine’s could ever dare to be, particularly in the first-half. Hazard had the fewest touches of any Chelsea player who went the full 90. He had no shots on goal for only the second time this season. The other was a 26-minute substitute appearance against Crystal Palace. He completed only one dribble while being dispossessed five times, the second-most in a game this year. Only Liverpool took the ball off him more.

But again, he set up both goals. And like Olivier Giroud, Hazard can do a lot from the centre of the offence even if he is not shooting and scoring.

However, he is not happy and Chelsea are not at their best if he is not shooting and scoring. Using him as a false-nine was a (gasp!) pragmatic decision by Maurizio Sarri to minimize Hazard’s weaknesses on defence and pressing, reinforce his full-backs with more defensively-minded wingers, give more speed in the middle than Olivier Giroud and more physicality than Alvaro Morata, all while throwing a curveball to Pep Guardiola’s match preparation.

If we’re going to have the conversation about N’Golo Kante being under-utilized when in his new position, we need to have it about Eden Hazard in his not-new-because-Antonio-Conte-did-it-and-it-helped-cost-him-his-job position.

Chelsea’s loss to Wolves and win over Manchester City were both outliers in their own way. Wolves are a tactically difficult opponent, but still a thoroughly midtable one. This was a winnable match, and the Blues could have at least drawn if not for a combination error to produce Wolves’ second goal. City, on the other hand, are the reigning and presumptive Premier League champions. Most people predicted Chelsea would lose, and there would have been little shame in losing.

This makes it very different to draw solid conclusions from both games, and these games should not be the definitive basis for any decisions going forward.

N’Golo Kante’s assist and goal could have been produced by any box-to-box midfielder. They did not require anything uniquely Kante. But then again, the assist started with Kante doing what he does best. Kante’s complete performance against City – the 89 minutes in which he did not score a goal – came in large part due to Sarri freeing him to play his usual, “best” position. Not many players could have shielded Chelsea’s defence as against Manchester City as well as he did.

Maurizio Sarri rotated significantly in that winnable loss. Yet two of his three Premier League starting XI debutantes were among Chelsea’s best players. Rotation only contributed directly to the loss via Andreas Christensen, but that only via Willian.

Drawing from the same pool of five players, Sarri experimented heavily with his offence in the last three games. In the most important and difficult game, he did the thing he said he would not do but which was one of his defining measures while at Napoli: playing a winger as a false-nine, in this case Eden Hazard.

The last three games peaked in Chelsea’s most noteworthy performance of the season. Many of the main debates about Maurizio Sarri’s tactics and personnel management played a role in each reversal of results. The body of knowledge around this edition of Chelsea and Sarrismo is richer than ever, but the discussion is far from settled.