Terrace Talk: City result restored a bit of faith but...

If ever there was a week that summed up Chelsea Football Club, then the happenings of the past seven days was it.

Lose to a side who had managed just one point out of 18, then three days later beat one of arguably the best teams the Premier League has ever seen.

As most of you know, I didn’t think Sarri had it in him. And I’m still not sure. He obviously changed our formation and we won against City but I’m not sure whether it was luck or judgement on the manager’s part.

After all, anyone with even a modicum of footballing nous felt that Morata was not worth his starting place and Giroud wasn’t exactly setting the world alight either, so dropping them wasn’t exactly a tactical stroke of genius.

The players themselves seemed more determined and focused — but again, was that due more to the humiliation of losing to a team like Wolves than anything the manager may have said?

I suppose we will know more with the games coming up. Hazard obviously doesn’t like the false-9 position — who does? It almost totally negates his extraordinary talents, but is this a sacrifice he may have to make until we can address our striker issue? Could youth be our only choice? Loftus-Cheek seems to be making inroads into the first team and is looking the part. Hudson-Odoi and Ampadu also seem to be staking real claims but past Chelsea managers never seem to give our young strikers even a sniff of the first team.

Leading the line is a big responsibility for a young and inexperienced player but desperate times may call for desperate measures. We would at least know one way or the other if some of these kids have what it takes. Unless of course, Sarri and the coaching staff have already explored this avenue and feel that none of the current crop are of that standard. Some may think it unfair — even counter-productive to put some of these youngsters in the first team — but you look at players like Wayne Rooney and the adage of “if you’re good enough, then you’re old enough” comes into play.

But back to Saturday’s game. The thing that I found most interesting was the way we withstood the onslaught in the first half — what a difference to the lackadaisical display up at Molineaux. We all know that teams can have off days but there does seem to be this complacency when playing “lesser” teams and I thought it initially to be a lack of leadership on the pitch. After all as Chelsea fans we were used not only to John Terry but players such as Michael Ballack, Frank Lampard, Petr Cech, Ashley Cole -all leaders in their own right.

But realistically, teams generally look to be moving away from the inspirational captain figure. Take the top five for example. All have inspirational talented, successful players — but do any of them have the captains of the type that they relied on in the past? I would argue not.

This makes the role of the manager even more important. To ensure that all players take on a sense of responsibility when they take to the field — to give it everything they have. And I don’t think that Sarri has that influence on this team yet as nothing changed in the second half up at Wolves.

Another thing the Italian needs to improve on then. The win against City has certainly restored a bit of faith, but it will ultimately be pointless if we then have repeats of the Molineux debacle.

I sympathise with Sarri as I personally think he has taken the helm at a very difficult period in the club’s history and with all probability will not be able to really go in the direction he wants to go for a number of reasons.

But he will need to deliver fourth as a minimum and that is going to be a pretty tall order.