Chelsea’s one lesson learned about Danny Drinkwater: Yes, it was all Sarri

Danny Drinkwater has blended in to Chelsea’s preseason squad so well you could almost forget he was there. One could almost start thinking he is good enough to play for the team that ignored him for an entire season.

David Luiz played the full 90 minutes against Kawasaki Frontale, putting in a standard Luiz performance: 85 minutes of decent play interspersed with sloppy decisions that a better opponent in a competitive game would pounce on, until the one that this opponent in this friendly pounced on for a 1-0 win. Mason Mount and Ross Barkley continued to show their individual talents and their burgeoning relationship in Chelsea’s midfield. Michy Batshuayi still looks like a man hellbent on being the starting No. 9 this season. Kenedy is still the most one-way player the club have seen in some time, and that one way is usually let down by his first touch.

Danny Drinkwater has made no such impression. No highlights, no howlers. In 45 minutes against Bohemians and 34 minutes against Kawasaki Frontale, Drinkwater has done nothing to knock anyone out of the depth chart above him nor end his hopes of playing for a top-six team.

Drinkwater could stay or go without too much consequence for the Blues. Frank Lampard has enough options ahead of Drinkwater that he is probably outside the fence right now, even accounting for his being a homegrown player.

But if Lampard keeps Drinkwater, Chelsea will have a useful depth midfielder, someone who can play a variety of passes and bring play up the pitch, preferably when protected by someone like N’Golo Kante or Tiemoue Bakayoko. Drinkwater is a lite version of some combination of Jorginho, Mateo Kovacic and Mason Mount, the kind of guy who can get you through the domestic cups quite handily and jump in to Premier League and Champions League (preferably the dead rubbers) squads as necessary.

With a young team under a transfer ban heading into four competitions, that all makes Danny Drinkwater a pretty useful player.

And, with this all being based on his 100 minutes or so this preseason, it also shows that the only explanation for his ghosting last season was Maurizio Sarri’s pettiness.

The standard for completely exiling a player, for telling him in August “I can’t do anything for you,” should be extremely high. It should be more extreme than whether a player is in the regular XI.

A player in his mid-20s with several years of first-team experience in that same league (and a title, to boot) being told by his coach he will never play because he is incompetent beyond the point of instruction should be a player whose incompetence is visible within minutes of any game against any opponent. The incompetence should transcend the formation: a player who can “only play in a two” in truth cannot play in any set-up. It should call into question the decision of every manager who played him up to that point, because this player’s boobery should be unmistakable to even the most uninformed observer.

Those of us who watched Leicester City instead of Napoli in 2015/16 didn’t see it. Most Chelsea watchers mustered little more than an indifferent shrug for his 1,000 or so minutes in 2017/18, but no one thought it warranted a writ of exile.

In this preseason, Danny Drinkwater has been nothing to justify his complete exclusion from last season. His decision-making, execution and understanding have all been within the range of those around him.

Has he been revealed as a star? No. Is anyone saying “Lampard needs to get rid of these other players before he can even think of getting rid of Drinkwater?” Not that we’ve heard. Does Mason Mount have anything to fear? lol. Are fans crashing the Chelsea megastore to buy his kit? Nope. Does anyone even know what his number will be? More importantly, does anyone much care? No and probably not, other than his friends and family.

But has he been irredeemable as a Chelsea footballer, shown himself to be wholly unsuited for a top-six team, demonstrated a resolute unwillingness to learn, exposed a shocking incompetence in the fundamentals of the game or brought down the quality of the players around him through his sloppiness, ignorance or buffoonery?

Absolutely not.

Danny Drinkwater may not be in Blue this season. Or he may be. It’s a toss-up. We’ll be completely at peace with either outcome. Which is why we are still seething over his treatment last season.