Sorry ball - Sarri sack watch

Heading home now.

‘**** sarri-ball’ even in West Lower!

Surprised. If we Lose next Prem game against Spurs he is a goner I reckon!

Can Zola get us top 4 or too late?

Disclaimer! 8 pints and a gino down!

 

I agree 100% and haven't had a bloody drop.

 

That's because he's a champion and true professional. However, would RLC or even the dreaded Barkley not do as well if Kante was in his proper place and those 2, or Kovacic or even Jorghino himself , were freed up to at least try and attack and /or feed the strikers?
We'll never know with this nong in charge, but you're right Kante is maybe the only player we have who has improved at Sarri Ball

 

There's a manager free who's good at that.

 

In my opinion, Alonso is an Antonio Conte type player well suited to Conte’s playing style. Sarri ball definitely does not suit Alonso or many of our players.

 

We’ve got other players at the club that can do what Kante’s now being asked to do. A total waste of world class talent not playing Kante in his best position.

 

Whats not suited is having no one in the box, no runners, wingers constantly dropping onto the full back instead of making runs in behind or staying wide.

Also have kante/barkley/kovacic in the middle ahead of jorginho. They arent the greatest attacking threats and dont have the vision for 1 touch passing or the power to turn a man in tight spaces yet we persist with it. Only rlc can do this. Oh and jorginho is lightweight and cant defend by himself.

If sarri keeps this up and keeps playing the wrong personnel and wrong formations then he will get chopped soon

 

Crowd definitely turned on Sarri last night. Can’t see him lasting much longer

 

Isn't it down to them to adapt? Or should the manager have time to bring in his own players.

 

Agree, but Sarri says himself "he needs to find a solution" when he should be saying "I WILL find a solution"

We've been playing badly since Leicester game in December, but got lucky with some results at Palace, Brighton, Watford

Games we should have lost.

I think if we lose to Spurs in league he will go. He seems so beleaguered.

His petty power battle: a refusal to play CHO as punishment for putting in a transfer request hasn't worked either. I think it has undermined him.

 

Pleased to see you are not leaving the site, Have you changed your mind?

 

He has to go .

The club won't, and realistically probably can't afford to rotate the squad sufficiently to allow Sarri ball to be effective. Very few of the current players look capable of playing it against decent sides.

Even then it probably wont work as you can see Jorginho will just be man marked out of the game which stops the whole thing anyway.

Any system that relies so heavily on 1 ok player is a **** system.

Plus even the best have to be tactically flexible and be able to react in game to the opposition as no 2 games are the same. The fact we knew the substitutions he would make before he did shows how embarrassingly 1 dimensional it all is.

Leaving CHO on the bench and bringing on our 2nd choice right back was ridiculous.

Kante was probably our best player despite being out of position so fair play to him. Hazard also worked relentlessly. Felt sorry for them.

Was prepared to allow him time but the nature of the results and performances of late bring into serious question his competence and we are in danger of being left behind. We will lose CHO and Hazard in the summer as well.

Give someone else 3 months to get used to the squad and can hopefully hit the ground running in August. Keeping Sarri is delaying the inevitable. We wont make top 4, we're going to get battered on Sunday and we'll go our Europa as soon as we get a half decent team who can work out how to beat us i.e. man mark Jorginho and double up on Hazard,

Rant over

 

Nobody knows if this kid is the answer over the experienced players, is he tearing it up in training. Might as well give him a go imo but none of us really know.

 

You are right and I think us as fans are to quick to say this player or that player is the answer when we don't know how they are performing in training. Apparently Barkley looks amazing in training but rarely carries that into games.

But isn't an exciting, fast, unpredictable, direct winger exactly the sort of sub to make in last night's game at 2-0 down and clearly out of ideas?

From about 60 minutes on we didn't remotely look like scoring and United knew exactly how to defend against us. Only a bit of genius or a mistake was going to result in a goal. We've not even got set pieces going for us like we did under Conte so I question his ability to set the team up for those as well. So many corners and free kicks last night and never once close to scoring. In fact United looked dangerous on the break aways.

 

Ultimately a stubborn manager is one that wont last long. Only Wenger's good will and standing at the club kept him at Arsenal as long and we are fastly mirroring them from 3-4 years ago. Lots of the ball but lacking physicality, leaders and the ability to adjust to the opposition. Ironically Arsenal became a decent cup side in the last few years of Wenger's reign as we have been of late.

 

Surely anyone in Sarri's shoes would be able to see that simply persisting with these tactics is not going to produce in the short term. It's so far off working that surely he can realise that doing the same stuff in training and hoping it suddenly clicks with 8, 9 ,10 different players is fruitless. But he will persist with it, the results will continue and he'll be sacked before he gets a full summer and another window to better implement it.

Stubbornness, stupidity. A very fine line.

I don't even think the players have downed tools. I just don't think they can't either understand the tactics or can't physically implement them.

Getting so bored or Sarri churning out the same dross like the players aren't playing his football and they'll just have to work on it in training. You haven't got the time!! Our season could be over this time next week!

 

Alright, StanDMan you win. However, if/when Sarri gets the sack it’ll be more to do with Kante and Hazard being played out of position. Especially irksome to me is Kante being played out of position to accommodate Jorginho who - on current form - I’d rate as no more than lower Premiership or upper Championship quality.

 

Rightly or wrongly, Jorginho is certainly become the scape goat and poster boy for Sarri ball.

I feel a little sorry for him as it's our tactics that are causing the problem. I can't think of another top side that employs a player of his ilk on his own in midfield and yet it must have worked at Napoli. Presumably the slower pace of the Italian game suits him more?

Getting marked out the game by Mata though. Mata is a good player but not someone you'd normally think of to do that kind of job. Shows how relatively easy it is to stop him and thus stop us through the middle.

I think there is a good player in there somewhere and Fabregas for instance would have struggled just as much in this system yet looked great with Matic next to him in our title winning side. In a 4231 system he may work better but he also needs to be far more adventurous with his passing. It's very sideways and 1 - 2's with centre backs.

 

I have to say, I'm also a little unclear what sort of goals / chances this system is meant to generate save for passing the opposition to death.

Players are clearly dissuaded from crossing the ball, from shooting from distance or long balls. Luiz now and then will put a long ball over the top but it's not effective when teams invariably sit back a bit. We are woeful on set plays as well. We seem really limited in the types of chances we are trying to create, especially if Hazard or Willian don't do something out of nothing.

I probably need a few days away from the football but this is a **** as I've felt about the whole Chelsea set up in a long time. The performances, the manager, the transfer policy, the strategy, the youth policy It seems utter chaos.

Someone made a good observation on a podcast the other day, which was the miracles Conte worked in his first season probably set us back. Papered over some pretty big cracks and made it looked like things were rosy when they were not.

It feels like a crucial few months coming up for the club and some big decisions to be made. But keep trying the same old 1-2 year boom bust cycle can't keep happening.

 

No leaders in the dressing room
When you’re up against it who can you rely on to take the game by the scruff of the neck?
It takes a Terry,Drogba,Costa even little Dennis Wise
Nothing of that calibre