Chelsea have been particularly vulnerable to conceding goals against top-six sides in the first 20 minutes. The opening span against Tottenham will tell us a lot about what Maurizio Sarri has learned from his last few games against Spurs and Manchester City.
Mauricio Pochettino has been Chelsea’s tactical undoing for the last three years. The schedule has been in his favor, letting watch Chelsea settle into a certain style and rhythm, observe other teams’ parries and then set up Tottenham to show precisely how to defeat the Blues. He delivered the Premier League’s death blow to Sarriball in late November and, until Sunday, may have been cautiously amused at how little Maurizio Sarri adapted to avoid repeat outcomes.
The first 20 minutes of tonight’s London derby will show how much the two coaches have learned from the last three months, and in particular the last three days.
Chelsea have allowed seven Premier League goals in the first 20 minutes of games this season. Two of those came in the 3-1 loss to Tottenham, and three in the 6-0 loss to Manchester City (the others were against Cardiff City and Arsenal).
In that loss to City, Chelsea set up in their usual 4-3-3 with Gonzalo Higuain at centre-forward. Nothing about the lineup, the lead in to the game or Chelsea’s futile sporadic attempts to find a foothold indicated they entered with any gameplan other than standard by-the-book Sarriball. Pep Guardiola’s side took an early initiative to impose their will on to the flow of the game, blitz-disrupting the initial, cagey stages of the game when both sides find their footing and – in Chelsea’s game – settle into their rhythm. City pounced on Chelsea’s mistakes to establish an early lead, and then took advantage of Chelsea’s disarray to dictate the rest of the proceedings.
Maurizio Sarri denied Pep Guardiola those opportunities in the Carabao Cup final. By using Eden Hazard as a false-nine, having him press low and light, and defending in a 4-5-1, Sarri closed down the spaces and routes City exploited for that early lead. City had a Sarri-esque 69% possession and a scoreless draw over the first 20 minutes, as opposed to 56% and a 3-0 lead two weeks earlier.
Despite some superficial “un-Sarri” similarities between the two games against Manchester City, they were very different for one significant reason: Manchester City stole Sarri’s illusion of control within the first 20 minutes of the Premier League disaster, whereas Sarri established true control in the first 20 minutes of the Carabao Cup final.
Chelsea used the first 20 minutes on Sunday to set the tone for the game. Because they denied City any early opportunities, let alone an early lead, those first 20 minutes became the platform for the Blues to control the final quarter of the game and most of extra time. By nominally handing initiative in the form of possession to City, Chelsea kept themselves in control of the game.
It was a Captain Obvious moment worthy of a Hotels.com commercial. Sarri realized that sometimes the team without the ball has a greater say in the proceedings than the team with the ball. One hundred and twenty minutes of clean sheet proved him (and Benitez, and Mourinho, and Conte) right.
Mauricio Pochettino will be looking to see if Maurizio Sarri reverts to failed form or continues his progress from the Carabao Cup final. Tottenham will likely start the game in a 4-diamond-2, which is most effective against Sarriball Chelsea. If the Blues come out with a proper striker, and use their early possessions to hold on to the ball, Spurs will be set up to target Jorginho on counter attacks and overwhelm Chelsea in the middle of the pitch. That would be the scenario for Chelsea to conceded another (or several) early goals.
The Blues are hardly out of the danger if they play out of possession. Pochettino responds to low blocks by shifting his team – often without needing any substitutions – into a three-man defence with a wide midfield.
However, this at least sets Tottenham into their Plan B and starts Chelsea in a more conservative posture, buying Sarri the time to organize his squad against it. And as the Blues showed against City on Sunday, they have the ability to build their way into the game and reverse the run of play, provided they are not chasing the game.
Maurizio Sarri showed the hollowness of his boastful ideology of possession-based football on Sunday by forsaking it when his job and his first cup were on the line. He was right to do it, even at the expense of his ego and our snarky barbs. The question now is whether that was a product of very specific circumstance or is truly the start of long overdue evolution. Perhaps it depends on how secure he feels in his job today as opposed to Sunday.
Tonight, Sarri faces the manager who has done more to undo Chelsea than anyone else in the last few years. Pochettino knows how to grab an early advantage, and he will know if Sarri has left one out for the taking soon after kickoff.
The London derby will be less than a quarter gone when we will have a good insight into where this game – and perhaps more than that – is headed.