Terrace Talk: Chelsea - Trouble ahead without a Plan B as ‘Sarri-ball’ punctured

There are a lot of decisions to be made in the next month or so at Stamford Bridge.

Chief amongst those is whether the manager is going to continue to try and implement “Sarri-ball” (for want of a better term) with a group of players who (for the most part) do not suit this system.

It’s akin to hammering a square peg into a round hole, which is achievable with a lot of brute force and a big enough hammer, but the result is an ill fit and usually an item not fit for purpose. And that is effectively where we are now.

So do the money men buy Sarri the players he needs to accommodate his signature style? Sadly, based on recent years, I’m not so sure that will happen.

Obviously, Jorginho was a Sarri signing (we’ll come back to him), but we need at least three or four others to make a realistic go at this new approach. Some of you may think I am overly concerned given we have lost just one game this season.

If that’s your stance, I’d wager you haven’t seen us play much in this campaign. We have been poor for most of our games with only a couple of notable exceptions.

The performance and result against Tottenham has been coming — the Everton game was a huge warning — a warning that Sarri chose not to heed.

In fact, he more or less admitted after the game that he knew this performance was coming. And that worries me enormously.

I get that this is a project and there is going to be some pain before (hopefully) he achieves his end goal. But the manager cannot simply allow us to get battered before we get there. He must have a Plan B surely? Even after he gets the team to where he wants it to be, he still needs a Plan B to fall back on when things are going awry.

The other decisions involve some of the current team. The biggest and most controversial of which is what he has done to Kante.

I cannot think of many managers that would take arguably the best defensive midfielder in the world and not only play him out of position but then put someone like Jorginho in his place.

With Kante out of position, the back four are horrendously exposed – especially Luiz. So, what exactly has Sarri achieved by these decisions and tinkering?

The English league is very different to the Italian league — far more unforgiving. It is far more physical and faster. I’m not even sure that should Sarri get to the point where he has the team he wants, playing the style he wants, whether it could successfully compete in this league.

So far he has been fortunate — a mixture of luck and the advantage of being an unknown quantity made most teams face us with a certain amount of trepidation. That initial fear of the unknown has all but dissipated and that “performance” against Tottenham has left us very exposed. Any manager watching that will believe they have more than a decent chance against us. Should Sarri not come up with some interim plan, they’d be right.

I have a feeling that it’s going to be a long season.