Three things to look for in Watford vs. Chelsea: Rotation, responses and zones

Chelsea will bring Boxing Day to a close at Vicarage Road, a fixture that saw one of the Blues’ lowest defeats of last season. Here a few things to look for as Maurizio Sarri looks to restore Chelsea’s dominance over Watford.

Watford has spent most of the Premier League era in the Championship, and 2017/18 saw their first victory over Chelsea since 1999. Down at the time scale that matters, both clubs have lost three of their last six matches. But Watford are coming off of two wins while the Blues have been the model of inconsistency, especially against midtable teams like their hosts today.

1. Rotation, rotation, rotation

In real estate, location is everything. In the festive period, when you are coming off an insipid defeat and have a few midtable (or lower) opponents before facing Tottenham in the Carabao Cup and Arsenal in the Premier League, rotation is everything.

Maurizio Sarri has multiple overlapping considerations for his rotation. The obvious is simply that players cannot play every three days for very long before their form plummets. Regardless of results, Sarri would have to rotate his squad.

Given his career-long reluctance to do so, which extended into his first few months at Stamford Bridge, juxtaposed with a schedule the likes of which he never saw in Italy, late-December rotation was always going to be an interesting prospect. Of the next three games Watford are the most dangerous and tactically adept, but none are easy – not with Crystal Palace on a “just beat Manchester City” bounce and Southampton enjoyed the new manager bounce.

Recent results add a few more layers. Willian has been one of the most consistently below-average players in the last month, but still holds his place in the starting XI. David Luiz has been in full “revert to form” mode, and his tendencies are so predictable Leicester City used him (along with Jorginho) to pry apart the Blues’ structure. Sarri has left himself few options among the centre-backs, but still has plenty of possible wingers to replace Willian. Ruben Loftus-Cheek or Callum Hudson-Odoi could step in on either side of the pitch, although Sarri would never play both.

Playing Eden Hazard as a false-nine has allowed him to rest his strikers at the expense of Eden Hazard. That, of course, is not to say that resting his strikers in any way motivated the false-nine option. But now he has the option of bringing Alvaro Morata back to the starting XI to take some of the burden from the wingers.

The club are relying heavily on Eden Hazard. Maurizio Sarri may not be willing to drop more points, but he will need Hazard more in mid-January than in late-December. Giving Hazard a night out of the lineup could also force the rest of the squad to sink or swim without him. Of course, that raises the question of whether these players care enough about sinking, swimming, dog paddling or flailing and splashing wildly in the open seas. Which brings us to…