At one point in a dreadful January, manager Maurizio Sarri was close to the sack as Chelsea’s fans called for his head, slammed his tactics, and his team lost five out of a dozen games.
That dismal run saw Chelsea humbled 4-0 at Bournemouth, humiliated 6-0 at Manchester City, and turfed out of the FA Cup by Manchester United on their own pitch.
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It was a season that looked like it was going nowhere, and Sarri himself looked like he was on his way out of the club just seven months after arriving from Napoli.
But from somewhere, Chelsea’s players dug themselves out of the situation, and strung together a run of results, with only two defeats in their final 18 games, that saw them clinch third place in the Premier League – and a chance to win a trophy here in Azerbaijan if they can beat old rivals Arsenal.
Sarri himself claimed on Tuesday night that something changed in the mentality of his players in that period that led to that resurgence, and David Luiz said: “Only intelligent people can adapt. If you’re intelligent, you can adapt and understand the moment. If you’re not intelligent, you are never going to change.
“The first thing to change in life is to understand the moment. We understood. When you understand the moments, where you are, you understand how you can improve. That’s why we did it.
“If you understand that the group is good enough to fight for titles. You can lose sometimes but, to win, you have to sacrifice yourself, give more, do everything for this club.
“That’s what we did. Many players understood that and changed the situation.”
Chelsea skipper Cesar Azpilicueta added: “The manager helped to bring us back up. At the down times, he wasn’t happy. But we always tried to find the solutions to come back.
“When you have tough defeats, it’s very difficult to find a solution, but we did it together, the manager first. As soon as the game was finished, he tried to find a solution with the staff and the players. We did it. That’s one of the reasons we are here tonight.”
Sarri revealed on Tuesday night that he had grown to love his players over the course of the season, and while he hinted for the first that he had a decision to make on his future with Juventus keen on recruiting him, that love would give him cause to think hard.
Azpilicueta said: “We have been working very hard with the manager since July. Perhaps we have had downs where we were not happy with the results.
“But, from the downs, we have become stronger. After all the hard work we have been doing through this season, I think we all deserve tonight to do have a good game tonight.”
With his side riddled by injuries to Ruben Loftus Cheek, Antonio Rudiger and N’Golo Kante, felled at the weekend by a knee problem and almost certain to be ruled out of the game – much on Wednesday night will depend once again on the brilliance on Eden Hazard – another in possibly his last game for the club, with Real Madrid set to move in after the game.
But Sarri revealed: “It’s a pleasure to have Eden during a match. Sometimes during the week it’s a problem – because he’s a talent and during training, sometimes he’s bored because, for him, everything is very easy.
“During a match, it’s a pleasure. He’s one of the most important players in Europe, in the world, at the moment. I think he can improve. He can become the best player in the world.”