Chelsea: Maurizio Sarri throws 10 Blues under the bus, comes back for the 11th

Maurizio Sarri’s press conferences are becoming drop-in tutorials on how not to speak about – let alone manage – a team. Even when he tries to spare his favourite, Jorginho is swept up in the mass denouncements.

If only one team would do what Maurizio Sarri wants them to do he would be a much happier man and, presumably, a more successful manager. Wolves simply would not make room in the final third for Chelsea to set up some overloads, dribble into the box and take some high probability shots. They “[didn’t] want to play,” Sarri said, and he responded with characteristic impotence.

He couldn’t even get his own team to listen to him. Not over the seven months he has been training them, not while shouting at them in games, not in those previous press conferences where he spoke about speed as the sole missing ingredient holding Sarriball back from Premier League success.  As many times before, so on Sunday he said: “[W]e have to say that you have to play without spaces you have to move the ball faster. You have to move with one-two touches not five-six… We needed to move the ball faster and more movements without the ball.”

If the problem is not enough fast one-touch passes, one player is certainly immune from the critique: the player who only makes fast one-touch passes, Jorginho.

Not so fast. Maybe Sarri took Jorginho’s comments from last week to heart and wanted to dispel the notion that Jorginho is his golden boy. In explaining why he withdrew Jorginho before shifting Chelsea to a 4-2-3-1, Sarri said:

"For Jorginho it’s difficult to play when the other players are not moving off the ball. He’s very able to play at one touch but today it was impossible. He was in trouble and when I decided to play 4-2-3-1 Jorginho was not suitable. – Sky Sports"

Well. Sarri does love a good self-own, and here he dealt himself another. One of the most common critiques of Jorginho is that he can only do one thing, in one position, in one formation. Jorginho and Sarri’s dedication to the 4-3-3 are mutually reinforcing. Apparently Sarri sees it that way, too.

Sarri’s gripe about the other 10 players not being able to play fast enough is just the latest version of his common refrains. The system is not at fault, nor is he for faulty instruction or insufficient buy-in to his methods. The players are just not doing the job. He cannot accept the possibility that maybe the players are, in fact, moving the ball as fast as they can given the constraints on the field. Sarri expects to see it a certain way, all externalities be damned. It’s as if Sarri – like the Sarritologists – thinks a game of football plays out the same smooth, predictable way 6v0 passing circuits play out in training.

He seemed on the cusp of understanding that speed would not solve the issue. His disrespect towards Wolves showed a glimmer of something more.

If Wolves were not coming out of their shape, were tightly man-marking in the final third and were not pressing Chelsea near or over midfield, no increase in pace would create the gaps. Part of Wolves’ compact defensive structure was minimizing the area each players would need to cover, thus negating Chelsea’s advantages in speed and quality.

But accepting this would force Sarri to look elsewhere for an explanation. If raising the tempo would not solve things, something else would. But that something else would not lie with the players. Better to keep some doors shut.

Sarri’s thought process, then, begs the question of what can be done to improve the product on the pitch. The only option is to bring in new players. Better players, the right players, we are told.

Which coach at any time and place in sports history wouldn’t want better players? In English football, unless a coach wins the quadruple, he can always make the case that he could have done more if only he had better players. Pep Guardiola could win the quadruple this year and still say he needed better players, so as to win the Premier League by 20 points, improving upon last season’s margin.

Anyone who says Sarri needs better players is admitting Sarri cannot do the job he was hired to do: coaching Chelsea FC. Chelsea will always have their players, who will always be some way short of better players. And they will always be in the Premier League, whose footballing culture – physical, tactical and developmental – set the constraints for every manager on every team.

Once Chelsea move on from Maurizio Sarri, it will likely be a matter of hours before we start hearing how true Sarriball has never been tried. We can all think of one or two Twitter accounts who could rebrand as the Sarriball Party of Great Britain.

Sarri himself will likely make comments along these lines. If only he had the right players, if only the players he had listened to him, if only they were motivated for his style, if only the opponents had wanted to play. If only Jorginho could do more than one-touch passes in a 4-3-3 (that’s when you’ll know Sarri is going full scorched earth).

If only, if only, if only. If only Chelsea had seen this coming.