Maurizio Sarri is the king of the status quo, and look where it has brought him. His only hope for Chelsea’s survival in three cup competitions and the Premier League top-four race is to discard everything, because nearly everything has failed him thus far.
My colleague Travis hits many of the right notes in the adjacent piece, but I fear his prescription would only justify more of the same from Maurizio Sarri. If Maurizio Sarri is not in full-blown panic mode and ready to act accordingly, Chelsea could slink out of one cup tomorrow while flaming out of another next Sunday. That would have Chelsea arriving at a new low when Mauricio Pochettino – a human-sized piece of tactical kryptonite – brings his resurgent Tottenham to Stamford Bridge the following Wednesday. Five days later, Chelsea would be at the start of their first week in over a month without a midweek game. Put another way, they would be at the start line for the sack race.
I imagine the conversation between Chelsea fans and Maurizio Sarri going much like Jeffrey Lebowski and The Dude in the former’s limo. Sarri / Dude: “Nothing is f***ed here.” Fan / Lebowski: “Nothing is f***ed?! The g**damned plane has crashed into the mountain!”
Travis leans on Chelsea’s decade of success in the FA Cup as a source of comfort and stability for the Blues. The obverse of that success is how blase the tournament has become, particularly for 14 players who have won so much else on larger stages and who hunger for the big-eared trophy, either at Chelsea or wherever they must go to lift it.
A large part of Maurizio Sarri’s struggles to motivate this squad is the fact that they have won so much doing things in non-Sarri ways. He is demanding they adhere to a system that has not won a single trophy, at the expense of various systems and individual roles that have won Premier Leagues, Champions Leagues and World Cups. Winning a domestic cup will keep Chelsea away from a Tottenham Special (i.e., a season with no trophies), but it will not convince players from Callum Hudson-Odoi to Eden Hazard nor anyone in between to stay. It may not even be enough to ignite the fight for the remainder of the season.
His preferred 14 players are not motivated to play his way, nor are they particularly motivated by Sarri’s goals, which appear to be stylistic more than silverware. Only new players or a new system will undo this trend at the club level, even if things are already too far gone with his preferred squad.
Maurizio Sarri, then, needs to panic. He needs to be desperate. He cannot think that he is one game, one training session, one pack of Lucky Strike’s away from everything coming together. Nor can he rely on a domestic cup to do the job he cannot do: motivate these players.
Playing a wildly different squad would be one approach. Callum Hudson-Odoi may be ready to give up on Chelsea, but he would appreciate a shop window for Bayern Munich to watch what he can do against Manchester United. Gary Cahill will never not fight for this club. Ethan Ampadu would happily do to Paul Pogba and a few other Red Devils what he did to Sergio Ramos. Some of the other assorted youth players who have orbited around the first team may not have completely given up hope on a future at this club. Let them take on the rampant Manchester United, alongside a few regulars like N’Golo Kante and Cesar Azpilicueta.
Another well-formed moment of panic from Sarri would be to emulate his opposite number on Monday – Ole Gunnar Solksjaer – and his successor at Napoli, Carlo Ancelotti. Much of Solksjaer’s success at United comes from simply taking all the restraints off his team. This is similar to what Ancelotti did at key moments in his time at Chelsea. Just let the players be. Let them go out there and do, well, whatever amidst a very loose set of structures and instructions. Ordered liberty is a remarkably pragmatic system, but I digress.
Maurizio Sarri has lost the cushion of Chelsea’s history, his players’ abilities and reputation and his own reputation (what is that reputation? Fun?). He cannot count on anything he has done or the club has done to pull him through this stretch. All those factors have brought him to where we are having this conversation.
Panic and desperation does not have to be blind chaos. Orderly lines to the exits and lifeboats save lives, but only if you sound the alarm upon hitting the iceberg (or better yet, when you realize you’re about to collide.
Among Maurizio Sarri’s few remaining questions is: if not now, then when?