After Chelsea were surprisingly up-ended by Everton 2-0 at Goodison Park yesterday, Blues manager Maurizio Sarri verbally unleashed upon his own team.
This is obviously not the first, or even the second time he’s lashed out at his own roster of players. As tipped by The Sports Report, Chelsea played well enough to win in the first half, but fell apart after halftime. The loss left them with the second most defeats away from home in the Premier League, behind only Fulham, the league’s penultimate side.
They are now sixth place in the table, three behind fourth place Arsenal and one behind fifth place Manchester United. Inconsistency has been their undoing all season long, and unless that changes, the Blues will find themselves outside the top four at season’s end.
“It is difficult for the players to explain the change to me. It is very difficult for me to explain the change to you. Probably it is a mental block, I think,” Sarri said.
“At the moment, this is our limit.”
“If we are able to play like in the first half with consistency then we are in another position in the table. We have this problem because we lost a similar match at Wolverhampton (on December 5, a 2-1 loss). We lost again in this way, for us it is a big limit.”
Chelsea are eliminated from the FA Cup and they lost to Manchester City in the EFL Cup title game, but they are through to the Europa League quarterfinals.
They return to action on March 31 with a visit to Cardiff City.
Paul M. Banks runs The Sports Bank.net, which is partnered with News Now. Banks, a former writer for NBC Chicago.com and Chicago Tribune.com, regularly appears as a guest pundit on WGN CLTV and co-hosts the “Let’s Get Weird, Sports” podcast on SB Nation.
He also contributes sociopolitical essays to Chicago Now. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram. The content of his cat’s Instagram account is unquestionably superior to his.