Maurizio Sarri is just six months into his Chelsea reign, but tonight the Italian must show how good he is.
Sarri has enjoyed some good moments up to now, yet the EFL Cup semi-final against Tottenham is going to provide the ultimate test of his talents as a coach.
His 4-3-3 formation was working well on a consistent basis until Mauricio Pochettino’s side exposed its flaws in late November.
With Spurs midfielder Dele Alli negating Chelsea’s playmaker Jorginho with ease in midfield, the Blues’ unbeaten start to the campaign was ended in emphatic fashion by their bitter rivals during a 3-1 League defeat.
Despite the sizeable impact on confidence and morale — Chelsea have gone on to lose to Wolves and Leicester — Sarri has remained fully committed to his ideology.
The former Napoli manager intimated before this first leg at Wembley that there will be a change of tactics from the first meeting with Pochettino.
Yet given how stubborn he’s been over 4-3-3, it will be a big surprise if the system itself is altered.
Eden Hazard certainly didn’t seem to think so, telling Standard Sport: “He is not the kind of manager where if we lose a game, he changes something.
“We will go there with our ideas of how to play football, we will play our football and then we just need to play better than we did in the first game.
“We missed aggression in that match. We need to do a lot more. We know they are aggressive and have top players, but we need to be more compact and create more chances.”
Tottenham strangled Chelsea in midfield just over six weeks ago and with N’Golo Kante picked in an advanced role on the right as usual, took advantage of the lack of protection to the back four.
It is an area that Sarri surely has to address.
Many observers have argued since the Spurs encounter that Kante and Jorginho should swap positions or that 4-2-3-1 be used in difficult away fixtures such as this.
That is very unlikely because of the 59-year-old’s total belief in 4-3-3 and Jorginho as the man in the all-important central role.
Talking points
Gazzaniga in the spotlight
Paulo Gazzaniga has been so impressive in his seven games for Tottenham this season that some fans even think he should be the club’s first-choice goalkeeper, ahead of Hugo Lloris. That is unlikely to happen in the short term, but Gazzaniga has long since moved ahead of Michel Vorm as Lloris’s main deputy and can improve his growing reputation with another assured performance tonight.
Which Luiz will turn up?
Brazilian centre-back David Luiz had a dreadful game when Tottenham beat Chelsea 3-1 in the Premier League at Wembley in November — only to produce one of his best displays two weeks later when Maurizio Sarri’s team defeated champions Man City 2-0 at Stamford Bridge. On top form, Luiz is a force to be reckoned with, but if he is off colour again, Chelsea face another difficult night.
Can Alonso keep Son quiet
Heung-min Son is one of the form players in England, with nine goals in his past 10 games, and he will be determined to maintain that streak before he flies to Abu Dhabi next week to join his South Korea team-mates at the Asian Cup. Chelsea left-back Marcos Alonso has looked shaky in recent matches and needs to regain his composure to silence Son and threaten at the other end.
One way Sarri might try to solve some of the issues Spurs exposed is to ask Kante to not be as adventurous in attack, while the wide players may drop deeper to help the full backs — essentially making it more of a 4-5-1 when out of possession.
Whatever Sarri decides, clearly something has to be altered for Chelsea to get a more positive result this time around.
Defender David Luiz has no doubts that Sarri’s set-up is good enough to get the better of the north London club.
When asked if Chelsea can beat Spurs using the same 4-3-3 line-up, he added: “I think yes.
“The first thing is to have humility and respect the job of my coach.
“I believe in his way, I believe in his work and for sure he is going to try and prepare the best plan to play this game. After that we are going to play a game with many top players in the world and it’s up to us to do the things on the pitch.
“My mood is always the same — a positive one. We did not play well there, it was a terrible match and that’s why we lost.
“We realise that and we have improved.
“It will be over two legs this time, so it will already be different. It is in a different period of the season, with different players, so this game is not similar to the other.”
Perhaps the biggest lesson Chelsea need to show they have learned from their Tottenham humiliation is merely to start the game a lot better.
Two months ago, Spurs seized the initiative from the kick-off, taking advantage of the sluggish visitors.
Chelsea were 2-0 down inside 16 minutes and never really recovered. Sarri blamed the timing of the fixture, coming just after an international break.
There is no such excuse this time around, although it should be pointed out that slow openings to matches have been a bit of a regular occurrence lately for the Blues.
Luiz added: “When you start with a goal, you get more confidence than the other team. They did that in the first game.
“The game was lost in the first 20 minutes — we did not have the head (mentality) to get back in the game. We have to be ready from the outset.
