MARTIN SAMUEL: If Sarri-ball needs time, he’s at the wrong club

It is not about motivation, it is the system. If the system functions, no elite club loses 4-0 to Bournemouth.

If Chelsea's players lack motivation, it is the motivation to believe in what Maurizio Sarri commands. So it's them, but it's very much him as well. It is his grand plan that has been rumbled — and in record time, too.

It took English football years to combat what Dave Bassett was attempting at Wimbledon, but Sarri-ball in its first inception was as good as over three months in, on November 24, 2018, when Mauricio Pochettino detailed Dele Alli to shut off Chelsea's supply line through Jorginho and the system fell apart.

That is what Aaron Ramsey did for Arsenal on the day Chelsea looked so toothless in defeat at the Emirates. On Wednesday night, it was the job Eddie Howe gave to David Brooks, a 21-year-old Welsh international, late of Sheffield United.

Brooks is a fine prospect but any system that can be so spectacularly negated by a forward with 21 starts in the Premier League and a team of players, none of whom could be imagined in a Chelsea shirt, isn't as smart as it thinks it is or as smart as a lot of people think it is.

For there is very heavy investment in Sarri-ball working, mainly by the type of football analysts that Graeme Souness scornfully dismisses as bluffers: those who believe statistical sheets ahead of what they see with their own eyes, that think football has been reinvented by a handful of modern coaches and no one previously split the centre halves or the strikers, or played out from the back.

Malcolm Allison was coaching goalkeepers to kick the ball properly and pass, better to start a quick counter-attack, 50 years ago. There is very little that is new under the sun.

It comes as a surprise to the bluffers when Luka Modric stands up having won the Ballon D'Or and thanks, not Zinedine Zidane or some obscure European coach with a cult philosophy and a spread of disciples, but Harry Redknapp for changing his position and his game.

Equally, while Pochettino undoubtedly showed the way, it was Howe, an English coach quietly working a minor miracle on the south coast, who took Chelsea apart with inferior players.

Yet you won't have to look far on Friday morning for a well-constructed treatise on how the critics are wrong about Sarri-ball, how much time it takes to work and how Jorginho is actually having a wonderful season, despite increasing evidence to the contrary.

Most midfield possession won, most successful passes of any player in Europe apparently and no one is suggesting Jorginho is a failure, more that he is just not good enough in his first season to carry an entire strategy in a league far stronger, faster and more physically demanding than Serie A.

Roy Hodgson has reached 71 as a top-level manager, so one imagines is in rude health. If you want to test his blood pressure, however, start tossing out statistics without context. He can get quite prickly, Roy, if he hears about percentage possession without a mention of where it occurs on the pitch and that's what Jorginho's numbers often lack: context.

His passes total 2,136 in 23 Premier League matches, at an average of 92.8 per game. Yet the way Chelsea operate, the play invariably goes through him. Jorginho keeps them ticking over, changing angles, changing approach lines, always available, drawing players towards him.

He makes the most passes of any player in Europe for that reason so, naturally, he makes more forward passes, too. Does that by definition make him attack-minded, though? Not necessarily.

Jorginho has made 530 forward passes this season, which initially seems impressive, but that's only a quarter of his output. He hits almost as many passes backwards (270) and astray (209) and more than half his total passes (1,127), travel sideways, as anyone who watches Chelsea will testify.

How many Jorginho passes have created chances this season? Just 15 — making him the 460th most potent player in the major European leagues. With how many assists? None.

The counter-argument is that Jorginho is not there to play that final, killer pass, but to light the fire, to keep the Sarri-ball bouncing. Yet what of Chelsea when this doesn't happen? What is the strategy when Jorginho is removed from the game by a manager such as Howe, who might not have a philosophy named after him, but seems to know his football just the same?

Is Sarri a genius or a myth? If he is such a great coach, why can't he keep David Luiz's head in the game, why can't he get Willian playing as he did under Jose Mourinho, why can't he adapt and get the best from N'Golo Kante? If Sarri is the master coach, why does he have a single way of setting up?

Most worryingly, if Sarri-ball needs time, then he is at the wrong club, because time is the one luxury Chelsea managers never get. Not from the players, certainly not from the owner who has now suffered his first defeat by a four-goal margin since arriving at Stamford Bridge in 2003.

Equally, if Sarri truly believes motivation is Chelsea's only problem that is problematic, because it sounds as if the willingness to make even a small alteration is not there.

So Chelsea sink or swim as they are. That may make Sarri a principled coach, but it doesn't necessarily make him a great one.