Sarri But Not Sarri Thread

[Fernando 6,479]

Good post, I would like to add to that how David Luiz is playing. 

Clearly the guy is not going to be the best defender in the world, but one thing Sarri said from the beginning is that David Luiz was able to understand his type of football. 

We can see clearly how the improvement in the attacking sense has improve. 

I can only think if this is what Sarri does for a player that can play his type of football, I wonder what he can do with more players that understand and perform this style? 

 

[Vybz Kartel 1,613]

The goal Liverpool scored through their fullback play will never happen at Chelsea because Sarri persists with Alonso and Azpi. Two fullbacks that lack pace and technical ability 

[Fernando 6,479]

10 minutes ago, Vybz Kartel said:

The goal Liverpool scored through their fullback play will never happen at Chelsea because Sarri persists with Alonso and Azpi. Two fullbacks that lack pace and technical ability 

You be a fool to believe that. He plays them because they are the best we got! 

If anything it's the club fault for not buying good defenders. 

[Vybz Kartel 1,613]

1 hour ago, Fernando said:

You be a fool to believe that. He plays them because they are the best we got! 

If anything it's the club fault for not buying good defenders. 

True, but there is no reason for Emerson and Zappacosta to have not started at least one game during the festive break. It would have helped to try something new plus also to reduce squad fatigue which clearly was a factor yesterday after 60 min

[Unionjack 7,531]

15 hours ago, communicate said:

Imo, if we have Diego Costa right now instead of Morata we will be talking about completely different team. We have no goal getter in this team beside hazard. Plus we need another creator, I honestly thought Kovacic is going to be that guy, clearly he is not. 

But you talk like Diego was an all scoing goal machine. He went for weeks without scoring/ There were peeps here saying to send him back to Spain.

Sometimes we look back with rose tinted specs or selective memories.

Yes I loved him. Yes hes better than our 2, yes I'd love to have him when he was in full flow. One of the best sights we have seen.

Its that fighting spirit thatt our players are missing. They dont seem able to dig down and find that extra gear or intensity.

[communicate 2,703]

2 hours ago, Unionjack said:

But you talk like Diego was an all scoing goal machine. He went for weeks without scoring/ There were peeps here saying to send him back to Spain.

Sometimes we look back with rose tinted specs or selective memories.

Yes I loved him. Yes hes better than our 2, yes I'd love to have him when he was in full flow. One of the best sights we have seen.

Its that fighting spirit thatt our players are missing. They dont seem able to dig down and find that extra gear or intensity.

I agree he is not really a brilliant goalscorer but he scored 20,12 and 20 in epl in three season. That is really good number.

For me H=he bring physicality and nastiness to our team, something that we really lack of. 

His finishing is not the best, but I still have confidence that It will go in.

With Morata and Giroud I have 0 confidence. Recently, whenever I saw any of our striker play, I honestly don't see them scoring at all. 

 

 

[Unionjack 7,531]

2 minutes ago, communicate said:

I agree he is not really a brilliant goalscorer but he scored 20,12 and 20 in epl in three season. That is really good number.

For me H=he bring physicality and nastiness to our team, something that we really lack of. 

His finishing is not the best, but I still have confidence that It will go in.

With Morata and Giroud I have 0 confidence. Recently, whenever I saw any of our striker play, I honestly don't see them scoring at all. 

 

 

Yeah agree with all that mate.

[manpe 10,861]

18 hours ago, Sideshow Luiz said:

This project can't be judged until at least the end of the season.  We're completely revamping the way we play.  We didn't get much of a pre-season due to the WC and our players making it quite far in the tournament.  We've been playing twice a week since October (about the time our play started to stagnate) unless it was an international break.  Sure, he needs to rotate more, I can agree with that.  But, it's his first season in England too.  

People seem to forget our botched pre-season, the most important and most productive time to prepare the team for a new style. Started with Conte, Sarri arrived a few weeks later, key players were given extra holidays so they missed pre-season altogether and returned only after season had already started. Considering all this, the fact we have never had a longer period on the training ground with all the players available, then at the moment we are where we logically should be or even punching above our weight a little bit.

 

18 hours ago, Tomo said:

The decline in performances is a lot down to one thing, The lack of training pitch time.

He is coming in, trying to teach the squad a totally different brand of football to what the players are accustomed too, he has a broken pre season where most of the key players are on holiday from the world cup then when they come back they are getting upto speed for the first few weeks and by the time they are we end up starting the midweek marathon where we have played in every single midweek since the PAOK away game in September which renders training time as manly warm downs, that is a killer when learning a completely new system and style of play.

Imagine you are doing weekly theory test's for driving (to pluck a random example), the first few weeks you have all the time in the world to revise and perfect things, but after that practice time is cut down significantly, eventually it's going to start to show in your results, won't it?

The chances created and attacking play in the final 3rd isn't anywhere near what it could be, but one thing he has got right is how we are defending and how comfortable we are on the ball. Now i know some may reply with "possession is pointless if you do nothing with it" and all the usual stigma cliche's and as a rule i would agree, but with us/Sarri it's not the end game it's a hopeful building block onto bigger things. I remember a few years ago that video came out on YouTube of Napoli expertly playing the ball out of the back under extreme pressure and people on here were posting about it with the green eyed monster wishing our defenders could do that, well after six months we are doing that, we have been seamlessly playing out of trouble even against Liverpool and City with defenders that were supposedly not capable of it. The 65%-70 possession per match and how comfortable we are in possession is a starting block to where we are trying to go and in fact i think Sarri's done very well to implement that so early, i actually thought that was the part of his tactics that were going to take the longest to implement but it's been done seamlessly.

Also i am very impressed with how good we look defensively, again that's another part i thought was going to take a while and i expected us to be vulnerable at the back for pretty much the duration of season one, the last two against Palace and Southampton both barely got a sniff at a chance, apart from the last ten minutes against Palace i didn't even remotely fear we would concede, that is quite remarkable all things considered, now i may get the usual counter of "it's only Palace and Southampton" well they have smashed a combined four past City recently and we gave neither a sniff. While we are on the subject of City remember how awful Pep and Klopp's defense was in the early stage? For Sarri to have us looking quite solid so early is a massive plus for me.

Now when a manager is not getting it all his own way there's always one thing you need to ask, can you see what he's trying to do? It doesn't matter how well he's currently doing it but just to focus on the question. Moyes would be the greatest example of the answer to that question being no, there was no real blueprint or idea on what he was trying to achieve and it looked like he was making it up as he went along. An example of yes would be Klopp at Liverpool, didn't get it all his own way for the first two years but the blueprint was there, what he was trying to achieve was there. With Sarri i can see what he's trying to do he wants us to play with speed and decisiveness but unfortunately that's beyond some of the current players, it's not even about getting the best players it's about getting players more suited to the style. Willian doesn't fit his desired tactics, neither does Barkley, neither do the forwards, neither does Alonso from an attacking POV, Kante's getting there but still learning the ropes, we can't consistently play the style he wants but we are trying to work towards it, for example Alonso's post hit at the end of the Leicester game would have been a typical Sarri goal.

All things considered Sarri right now i wouldn't say should get a free hit, but there is definitely mitigating circumstances which means he deserves the benefit of the doubt and we should give him a couple of windows to see where he could take us. Now don't get me wrong if we are still performing with such sketchy end product this time next year i will be as skeptical as anyone but what would the options be at the minute? Bottle it and go pragmatic for the end of the season and be back to square one in the summer? The big pro argument for that in the past is it would put us with a chance of the major trophies (2009, 2012) that isn't the case anymore so we have nothing to really lose by seeing the process though unless we bomb badly. With the emergence of what City, Liverpool and to an extent Spurs are doing we need to build something sustainable to keep up, the sticky plaster route was only ever going to work for so long!!

Post of the year.

[Unionjack 7,531]

52 minutes ago, manpe said:

People seem to forget our botched pre-season, the most important and most productive time to prepare the team for a new style. Started with Conte, Sarri arrived a few weeks later, key players were given extra holidays so they missed pre-season altogether and returned only after season had already started. Considering all this, the fact we have never had a longer period on the training ground with all the players available, then at the moment we are where we logically should be or even punching above our weight a little bit.

 

Post of the year.

Mate it was a sheer miracle we started the season as well as we did. We couldn't have had for a worse pre season even if a Gooner cursed us to have one.

Conte had absolutely no chance to do his ground work and properly evaluate the lads so he had to go by what our remaining training staff told him. And of course they were held back by their favoritism and familiarities with the lads instead of a cold eye of a proper evaluation.

But we have seen several times that our lads - the majority, can play this system quite well.

And this is where I dont fully agree with @Tomo  The problem we have is not as simple as lack of training time on the pitch. Its more deep rooted in our players characters and personalities..

They just dont seem to have the desire,ability,character to get the intensity to win. They cant move it up that extra gear in the final third of the pitch to strive for goal.

OK you might say we have had the chances and been unlucky or have squandered them. Thats part of our problem.

I'm sure that on the training pitch Sarri puts the guys thru all the training he thinks we need and it probably looks to him that its working or I'm sure he wouldn't select who he does. But its the guys putting that into the match and finding that final push thats missing.

We have a team of bery similar 'nice' players. Stable,friendly. We don't have game changers to go to so can only sub for a similar type of player in that position.

Sorry mate but we need to have a complete overhaul. Something is missing somewhere.

[manpe 10,861]

3 minutes ago, Mana said:

It doesn't matter if Sarri had a full length pre-season. Doesn't fecking matter.

...

Sarri has been here for 4 months now. He has settled in, so this lack of training time doesn't hold water now. It only holds water at the beginning of the season.

Can't agree with those parts at all.

[manpe 10,861]

7 minutes ago, Mana said:

Well it's the truth. Truth hurts unfortunately. 

Truth according to whom or what?

[manpe 10,861]

1 minute ago, Mana said:

It would have been the main reason, if we were drawing and losing in our opening games. Sarri went on a record breaking unbeaten run despite it being paper over the cracks.

Maybe it was partly because they had more training time? I also don't think it is the main reason, there isn't one, it's a mixture of everything... the most visible though are shit players.

[Clockwork 1,794]

Not sure what extra training time would do for this team. 

Is extra training time going to make our FB contribute more to our attack and create width? No, Alonso will always underlap congest the box and force Hazard to work with less space. Not going to turn Azpi into a modern FB either.

Extra training time will not make this midfield any creative. Jorginho, Kante, and Kovacic are good midfielders but none of them will ever be creative in the final third. 

Nothing to say about Morata and Willian, god knows the only thing that maybe can help them is playing in some Mickey Mouse league. 

The solution is simple bench some players, buy players, and change your approach. 

[manpe 10,861]

10 minutes ago, Clockwork said:

Not sure what extra training time would do for this team. 

Is extra training time going to make our FB contribute more to our attack and create width? No, Alonso will always underlap congest the box and force Hazard to work with less space. Not going to turn Azpi into a modern FB either.

Extra training time will not make this midfield any creative. Jorginho, Kante, and Kovacic are good midfielders but none of them will ever be creative in the final third. 

Nothing to say about Morata and Willian, god knows the only thing that maybe can help them is playing in some Mickey Mouse league. 

The solution is simple bench some players, buy players, and change your approach. 

It would improve teamwork. At the moment we're lacking cohesion.

[Tomo 21,733]

3 hours ago, Mana said:

Yeah, you need to shake your heads a lot more if you think this is all about the lack of training time and hardly anything to do with the shite players. It doesn't matter if Sarri had a full length pre-season. Doesn't fecking matter.

If you have donkeys on the pitch that don't execute your tactics properly, you'll never get far.

Sarri has been here for 4 months now. He has settled in, so this lack of training time doesn't hold water now. It only holds water at the beginning of the season.

I never said it was all about training time, but it plays a massive part of it. @Unionjack this is in some ways a reply to what you're saying too.

To use another analogy, if you were an officer trained on homicide cases and move to child protection, you will need a fair bit of training to perfect it. In a footballing sense the shift from Conte to Sarri is almost as extreme and the training time since Sarri's arrival has been pretty broken.

Of Course there's some average players that need overhauling, but sod all time to train and implement a new system is a killer, especially when it's miles in difference from the last one.

[BlueLyon 9,359]

46 minutes ago, Tomo said:

I never said it was all about training time, but it plays a massive part of it. @Unionjack this is in some ways a reply to what you're saying too.

To use another analogy, if you were an officer trained on homicide cases and move to child protection, you will need a fair bit of training to perfect it. In a footballing sense the shift from Conte to Sarri is almost as extreme and the training time since Sarri's arrival has been pretty broken.

Of Course there's some average players that need overhauling, but sod all time to train and implement a new system is a killer, especially when it's miles in difference from the last one.

True. Having complete preseason and transfers done soon can make massive difference. 

Thats why some smaller teams that do business smart and soon end up ahead of those that spend shitload in the last minute. Same applies for best teams.

[Clockwork 1,794]

2 hours ago, Tomo said:

I never said it was all about training time, but it plays a massive part of it. @Unionjack this is in some ways a reply to what you're saying too.

To use another analogy, if you were an officer trained on homicide cases and move to child protection, you will need a fair bit of training to perfect it. In a footballing sense the shift from Conte to Sarri is almost as extreme and the training time since Sarri's arrival has been pretty broken.

Of Course there's some average players that need overhauling, but sod all time to train and implement a new system is a killer, especially when it's miles in difference from the last one.

You know i would be much more understanding of that Conte to Sarri angle if our problem at the moment was conceding goals, but our issue at the moment is scoring goals and creating opportunities. I really can't excuse the fact this is not attacking football, this system is quite defensive in all honestly. Alonso and Azpi don't really bomb forward either due to lack of skills or instruction, and you have three hard working midfielders who are very rigid. 

 

 

[xPetrCechx 13,563]

He's just a puppet of the board.