Maurizio Sarri’s famous ‘Sarri-Ball’ is fast becoming a hinderance rather than a joy to watch at Chelsea.

The London side were swept aside at the Etihad today, they were four down by half-time to Premier League champions Manchester City and looked shell-shocked. In the end they thrashed 6-0!

When things aren’t going your way, then you need to have a Plan B, yet that simply doesn’t seem to be the case with Blues boss Sarri.

The Italian likes to see his team dictate the tempo of games with a high pressing game and with lots of passing. When it works, it’s great. But in the English top flight other clubs will suss you out if you become too predictable and that’s happened in recently with Chelsea.

Sarri brought Jorginho with him when he joined Chelsea from Napoli in the summer. The Italian coach likes to see the Italian international midfielder as his side’s conductor, playing numerous passes from a deep-lying midfield role.

Other team’s in the league have since decided to get closer to Jorginho when he gets the ball and starve him of space to play meaningful passes. That move has totally frustrated the twenty-seven year old and the team have looked weaker because of it.

With the midfielder now making less of an impact with his passes going forward, The Blues have begun losing the ball more in dangerous positions. Now another issue in that, is Jorginho isn’t great at winning the ball back and that means when they lose it in those dangerous positions he can’t offer the defence the protection that they need.

He had a pretty terrible time of it against Man City.

The Italian couldn’t close down Sergio Agureo and the Argentine duly finished excellently from distance. A top class defensive minded, holding midfielder would’ve snuffed that chance out at it’s source!

By the hour mark, Jorginho only attempted to make two tackles (winning just one of those). By the same time City’s midfield marshall Fernandinho made seven challenges and won four of those. The Brazilian protected his defence and allowed his side’s attacking stars to run riot, while Jorginho was a liability. The Italian would also end the game with a booking to his name.

Looking at the player’s heat map on Whoscored and you’ll notice that Jorginho started to wander onto the right and wasn’t in the holding role enough.

It must be extremely frustrating for the Chelsea fans to see the club have a weak centre when they know that Sarri is playing World Cup winner N’Golo Kante on the righthand side.

The French star is one of the world’s best defensive midfielders, yet it’s him and not Jorginho that’s being asked to play out of position against Man City.

Pep Guardiola’s men passed rings around Jorginho and Kevin De Bruyne gave the Chelsea middle-man a torrid time. Chelsea’s number five just couldn’t cope with the defensive duties needed for such an occasion.

In fairness, Jorginho wasn’t helped with Maurizio Sarri stubbornly keeping him on the field and in that holding role. Thus meaning he was continually exposed.

These numerous poor performances have left Jorginho drained of confidence and instead of dropping him and giving his team a stronger spine, Sarri just forces the issue by sticking with the same tactics.

By doing that Jorginho becomes ever more exposed and the support start turning on him too.

His manager should at least have Kante playing in beside him and offering the backline some protection.

Listen I like Jorginho as a player, I don’t blame him for the dip in form as it’s Sarri that has to take the blame. The manager should see that the player needs to be taken out for his own good.

If Maurizio Sarri can’t fix his philosophy and drop his favourite players when needed then his time as Chelsea manager could be short lived.

Today’s result has seen the Blues sink to sixth place and fourth placed Manchester United seem to have all the momentum in their favour.

If Sarri wants to get back in the all important top four he needs to get himself a Plan B and implement it!

Posted on February 10th, 2019 by scott
Filed under: Article