Sarri, Silva, Mahrez: When patience isn’t a virtue
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Despite a good deal of early encouragement the experiment in importing Sarri-ball to the Premier League is now a big dead duck bobbing in the water.
Over a period of many months the players have tried to master their new coach’s highly exacting demands and for reasons that warrant an essay in itself they have substantially failed to do so.
Maurizio Sarri himself has publicly admitted on several occasions that he is struggling to motivate his squad into replicating the ferocious and exhilarating football we all marvelled at in Naples.
To expect everything to click into shape anytime soon is to expect a miracle and frankly we are at the point where either the system goes or at least five or six very expensive players are allowed to leave for a fraction of their true value so that the club can recruit personnel who might – might – better execute it. At any club we know which of the two is sacrificed in this situation. At Chelsea we really know.
There is a third option of course. Sarri could compromise on his beliefs. But Sarri will absolutely and unquestionably not compromise on his beliefs. All of this leaves us with a big dead duck bobbing in the water.
So why is it then that pundits and journalists alike are queuing up at present to insist that what is needed in west London is time and patience? Give Sarri time, they state. Chelsea can’t keep chopping and changing managers.
It is a vacuous proposition with very little substance to back it up beside a much-parroted comparison to Pep Guardiola’s first season at Manchester City; an analogy that was lazy to begin with and is positively comatose now.
Granted the current title holders initially struggled to adapt to a new and complicated style of play but crucially there the players collectively bought into the ethos from the get-go. And at this stage of their baptising campaign they had ironed out the kinks, on route to losing only once more – ironically away to Chelsea, where the visitors were the better side throughout – until the season’s end.
Can anybody imagine Sarri’s Chelsea doing likewise, while blasting fives past multiple opponents as City did in the latter half of 2016/17? Seriously, does any single person reading this now consider a transformation of Chelsea’s fortunes to be even a remotely realistic scenario?
Heading north to Goodison Park leads us to another manager who is walking the green mile. It is not working out for Marco Silva at Everton and it’s not going to work out. I know it. You know it. We all know it. The fans are dispirited and disillusioned. The football is stolid and predictable.
In the past year the 41-year-old has had his reputation widely reassessed and most of us now acknowledge that perhaps we were premature in elevating him as an elite coach. All that will play out from this point until Silva is inevitably sacked is the gradual atrophy of the Toffees’ season.
What will be the fate of Chelsea’s Kepa after his Carabao Cup antics? Ingood Nick wades into the debate below…
You wouldn’t know any of this though by switching on the telly, reading a paper, or trawling half of the internet.
Give him time, say the pundits. Patience is needed, insist people on Twitter in response to anything that could be deemed critical of his ways. Everton can’t keep chopping and changing managers, is the hoary old trope. Some stability is needed.
It could be argued that stability for stability’s sake is akin to lying on a very uncomfortable bed each and every night because you’ve gone through a few beds of late. It could be argued that only stability with the right person makes sense, and if that person doesn’t even have a fighting chance of taking a club forward, then staying with them is completely and utterly counter-productive.
It could be reasoned too that sometimes in football – and I appreciate how highly contentious this suggestion is – the stars do not align and on occasion it is better for both club and manger to go their separate ways. And it really doesn’t matter if that happens six months in or six years in. Indeed it’s probably beneficial to all concerned if it’s the former.
Sadly, that perfectly logical truth now resides on the margins of discourse. Because what takes centre stage are two warring factions, one being the knee-jerkers who call for a manager’s head after a singular defeat and judge a new signing a flop a mere fortnight in. They’re loud. They’re quick to fury and quicker to condemn. They’ve reduced social media to a coliseum of juvenile boos, chorused for the slightest of slights.
And on the other side you have those who really, really don’t want to be mistaken for that lot. That’s why you have pundits espousing status quo at the Bridge. That’s why you have journalists looking down their noses at rightfully disgruntled Evertonians. By trying to distance themselves from the hysteria around them they seek out the higher ground believing that is where sense is occupied.
Plus, let’s be honest, they probably think too that it makes them sound really intelligent in comparison to the snap calls for change.
This week I wrote for another publication on Riyad Mahrez and queried aloud why it was proving so difficult for Manchester City’s record signing to establish himself as a starter. After all, it couldn’t be about adapting to English football because the Algerian has excelled in the Premier League for several years now. Surely then he is experiencing problems integrating himself into Pep Guardiola’s intricate system.
Unlike Sarri or Silva further up this piece at no juncture did I suggest there was a best-by date on the situation. I did however point out that Mahrez has played over a thousand minutes in a sky blue shirt and still hopelessly looks like an individual within a team structure: that after countless training sessions with the world’s best coach he remains a square peg in a round hole. In short, I was saying that enough time has passed to adamantly state there is an issue that warranted discussion.
Give him time, came the angry response. He’s only been here half a season.
The knee-jerkers have a lot to answer for. A sensible time to assess and act upon decisions made has now become forever lost. It is either an instant judgement call or extreme caution due to a fear of being regarded by a stranger as an idiot. Regrettably, in the case of Sarri, Silva, Mahrez and countless other coaches and players, the answer usually lies somewhere in between.