Chelsea lost 2-0 to Liverpool in a match they never looked like winning. For only a brief spell did they even look like they had a reason to be there.
Maurizio Sarri is probably a very good manager and an incredibly intelligent man. There’s little chance he could have simply stumbled his way all the way up the Italian league system while also working as a banker if he were a fool. At Chelsea, though, we’ll never find out because it doesn’t seem he or his principles are a great fit at this club.
Many people will highlight how Maurizio Sarri models himself on Pep Guardiola, and the many similarities between the two in their first seasons in English football. Manchester City, in Guardiola’s first season, finished fourth as the squad struggled to adapt to his philosophies and he to the division. Something similar applies to Chelsea under Maurizio Sarri: the players under the Italian do seem to be having teething problems.
That, though, is where the overlaps end.
The big difference is that one manager is in charge of Manchester City and the other Chelsea, and they are two fundamentally different footballing institutions at this point.
Manchester City were preparing for Guardiola’s arrival before he even set his feet on the ground in Manchester. They hired Ferran Sorriano and Txiki Begiristain, both compatriots and colleagues of Pep Guardiola’s at Barcelona before the manager signed his deal. They began building a support structure to help the manager ingratiate his philosophies at the club level as well as on the pitch. Then, following that first season in which they felt they underachieved, they moved decisively to support Guardiola further with a net spend of £145 million in 2016/17, £142 million pounds in 2017/18, followed by £63 million last summer.
Manchester City have done nothing but support Guardiola in every conceivable manner. It is one of the reasons why the Catalan manager chose the club in the first place. He famously turned down Chelsea for reasons that should move every other manager in world football to do the same.
When you are the manager at Chelsea FC you are on an island. You are alone, and you’re never going to get the sort of support a true footballing philosopher needs.
Chelsea just don’t do that and it’s why they are so different from Manchester City. Chelsea even fight with their new managers about how many coaching staff members they can have! Yes, it’s true. Managers at Chelsea are penny-pinched over the amount of support staff they can hire to literally improve the players they are left to work with.
That is why Maurizio Sarri won’t work out at Chelsea. It has nothing to do with whether or not he is a good or bad manager, and that’s not something I feel the need to argue this week. Chelsea simply aren’t the sort of club where a manager like Pep Guardiola or Maurizio Sarri should or can work.
And this is why, against Liverpool, Chelsea were so thoroughly outclassed for the entire match with the exception of 12 odd minutes after the introduction of Gonzalo Higuain. Sarri again made several mistakes in his team selection, likely due to his stubborn and admittedly Pep-like adherence to his principles.
Sarri has the best left winger in the world at his disposal and chose to play him as a center-forward. Yes, I do believe Eden Hazard is better than Neymar and Cristiano Ronaldo is a striker. But Sarri took the only chance Chelsea had of getting something out of this game and decided to maroon him in the middle of the field where he was uncomfortable and didn’t fit. People can say all they want about how Hazard resembles Lionel Messi and how the position worked for Messi under Guardiola. But Hazard has never taken to the role. That should be the end of it.
Hazard returning to his best position is why Chelsea suddenly came back into the game for that brief spell as soon as Gonzalo Higuain came on, before the Argentine was let down by his fitness again. Hazard out on the left made Trent Alexander-Arnold look like the level of player that everyone in the world with the exception of Liverpool supporters knows he is. Chelsea seemed like even getting a goal. Hazard immediately hit the post and then had another saved when drifting in from the left.
This, then, gets me to the final point. Sarri doesn’t do the simple thing Antonio Conte and Marcello Lippi have spoken about. A manager cannot be so selfish as to think the football match is an opportunity to display their own ideas at all times. Perhaps, over time, they can work the team in that direction. But there must be give and take, and this notion appears entirely absent at Chelsea.
The manager’s job is to put their players in the best possible situations to use their talents. Sarri has a talented squad, he just seems more intent on showing his own skills than theirs, and that is the issue.
Sarri should have started Olivier Giroud in the middle against Virgil Van Djik and given Chelsea a physical threat up front as well as a reference point for the attack. Instead he played Hazard through the middle and minimized his talent, which is the only real chance Chelsea had.
Tragically, Chelsea may have lost Antonio Rudiger to a knee injury. The one bright spot of Chelsea’s pathetic defensive performance this season left the match, and it was fitting things only got worse.
Reasons like this add up and contribute to Chelsea likely losing Eden Hazard to Real Madrid. His manager is more interested in his own personal issues than creating an environment for his players to display their most effective talents.
In one 2-0 loss to Liverpool Chelsea seemed to lose so much more than a match, a true tragedy for a club who often define themselves as serial winners. Chelsea don’t seem to fit that image or really any other these days. They’ll need to decide soon who and what they are because things are only getting worse.