Chelsea’s fag-chomping Italian supremo, Maurizio Sarri, has come in for some tough criticism this week after their 6-0 drubbing away to Man City. The mauling has prompted a number of incisive tactical analysis, which have driven at the heart of where things are going wrong with so-called ‘Sarri ball’.  

“It’s just not working” claimed BBC pundit and walking anomaly, Mr Christopher Sutton, “They pass the ball to each other but they’re just not passing it good and then the other team gets it back and sometimes they score. You want to stop the other team scoring. I know that from experience.”

Sutton’s fellow pundit, Alan Shearer, backed up his colleague’s view, “When they pass the ball to the striker, is he really putting it in the net? For me, he’s not putting it in the net. That’s the bottom line. Sometimes he’s kicking it over the bar, or the goalkeeper is saving it. For me, he needs to kick it in the net. It’s a shambles. They’ve got to kick it in the goal or it’s a shambles. That’s also the bottom line.”

Asked to justify their colleagues’ viewpoints later on Radio 5 Live’s flagship verbal punch-up, 606, Robbie Savage lived up to his name with a biting tactical dissection of Sarri’s shortcomings, “They let in a lot of goals. Shearer and Sutton can talk about kicking it in the other team’s net, but what about stopping it going in their net? Ultimately, it’s no good to have the ball going in your net. You want to avoid that if you can, and they’re just not avoiding it for me.”