Back when the mutiny in the far corner of this arena was at its most poisonous, the chants of “Fuck Sarri-ball” and “We want Sarri out” uniting the away support, it would have felt perverse to suggest that Maurizio Sarri would end up getting away with it; that he would not be punished for such a risky and provocative team selection or undermined by a performance so appallingly limp from a side seemingly unconvinced by his methods; or that he would mutter through his later media duties with regular references to being “lucky”.
Yet that is the bizarre contradiction that is Chelsea under the Italian. A team whose recent displays have been horribly disjointed, and whose supporters are in open revolt against the management, loiter only one point off the top three with seven games to play. They still have two potential routes open to them to reach next season’s Champions League. Most clubs would crave a campaign that might yield such reward and yet afternoons like this expose it all as a deception. The head coach insisted he would depart “really very happy” but in truth his tenure suffered serious damage in south Wales.
He clung to the late revival, the kind Chelsea have only mustered against Cardiff City this season, as cause for optimism. It had been one of his substitutes, Ruben Loftus-Cheek, who completed the turnaround. But even a linesman’s oversight and a stoppage-time winner against a team struggling to avoid relegation cannot paper over the cracks. Those who witnessed this match will not be hoodwinked into believing Chelsea merited anything. For well over 80 minutes this had been Sarri’s nadir – a display so grotesque it felt worse than the capitulation at Bournemouth, the meek mishmash at Arsenal, or even the thrashing endured at Manchester City, the most emphatic suffered under Roman Abramovich’s ownership.
They had been listless through the first period, their monopoly of possession played out at a plod with no zest or zip, no invention or incision, with Eden Hazard, Callum Hudson-Odoi and N’Golo Kanté, all established sources of energy, shivering on the bench. Gonzalo Higuaín, the man whose signing Sarri had championed, had retreated ever deeper in search of the ball. He would manage a solitary touch in the Cardiff penalty area. Jorginho, whose departure was accompanied by familiar cheers, and Mateo Kovacic were too lightweight to make inroads while Ross Barkley shrunk back into himself, as if those resurgent performances with England had been an aberration.
It had taken a little over half an hour for the first chorus damning the Sarri philosophy to go up from the 3,000-strong away contingent. That would be echoed early in the second half to accompany Hazard’s introduction with the visitors behind and once more a little after the hour. Interspersed around those were blunt and bellowed admissions that, in truth, their own team are not very good, that the head coach is out of his depth and that there is only one viable option to pursue. “We want Sarri out,” they chanted to the heavens, initially just after Victor Camarasa’s opener and again, with more oomph, as the game drifted with no sign of a turnaround in sight.
Sarri does not seem entirely convinced he will win those doubters around. “Unfortunately, I am getting used to this,” he said. “I have to work to change their opinion. We need to improve but we lost in Everton after our best first half of the season. Today we started very badly but in the end won.
“Probably with a bit of luck but, for sure, there was a bit of unluckiness at Everton.”
They had managed only one shot on target while succumbing at Goodison Park. Here they retired at the interval having failed to summon a single shot on target against a Cardiff team who had conceded 16 in their home games against Tottenham Hotspur, Arsenal, Manchester City and Manchester United. “I can understand [the frustration],” Sarri went on. “But I was really disappointed for my players because they were fighting. Probably it would have been better to wait until the end of the match. I want to stay. When I arrived this team had just finished 30 points behind City in fifth. So, of course, it wasn’t a very easy work.”
Not that he is making life particularly easy for himself. There may have been a logic in giving Kanté and Hazard a breather after their international exertions, even if the Belgian and Olivier Giroud had excelled in the 4-1 win over these opponents at Stamford Bridge in the autumn when the Sarri project appeared worth pursuing. But his stubborn refusal to capitalise on Hudson-Odoi’s sky-high confidence does him no favours.
Here is an academy product who Chelsea are seeking to convince to stay for the long term, a talent whose every involvement raises the collective mood. Yet the head coach has admitted he did not watch the 18-year-old’s full England debut last Monday, the biggest moment of the winger’s career to date and a contest in effect dismissed by Sarri as a mismatch against also-rans. Maybe Hudson-Odoi will start a first Premier League game on Wednesday night against Brighton but those close to the player are unconvinced.
They believe his future lies elsewhere. So, in truth, will Sarri’s.