All seems a game of chess to me. Just a thought:
Sarri is still the top target. Possibly Napoli appointing CA early made Chelsea think Napoli have shown their hand and thought we can get Sarri cheaper than the £8m (and rightly so a club cant have 2 managers so Sarri is off)
Yes, that's Chelsea being tight and penny pinching but its clear we are trying to be more 'economic' watching what we spend. Wouldn't surprise me if there is/was a mutual deal between us a Sarri to get him out of his contract via lawyers/buying himself out of his contract and we'll give him a bonus. I suspect something similar happened last season with Ross Barkley.
The talk we are put off by his past action are BS, we would have known about that, just a smoke screen to distance ourselves from him- as is his agent 'who is chelsea' talk
Things are taking longer than hoped for and being a World Cup summer/Shorter transfer window, we need to line up a replacement if things don' to smoothly - hense the Blanc/Joka talk
All things have gone quiet for us in the tranafer window too, hoping for a domino effect and we've had deals just waiting to be signed once Sarri/ a manager gets appointed
my hope at least