Eden Hazard is a genius! It's a treat to watch him under Sarri

There will be a time when all of the grand old grounds have been replaced by vast, anonymous monoliths, so one of the greatest vantage points for those who chronicle the game is to be cherished for as long as it remains.

The view it provided of Eden Hazard on Saturday will live long in the memory because there, right in the eye-line, was the Belgian's full repertoire.

He played with his head up, navigating a course through impossibly tight spaces, removing defenders from the equation with the trademark feint and cut-back from the byline and then combined with his improbable new attacking partner, Marcos Alonso, to score and put a lid on the victory.

Football has become preposterously pompous. This was the week when Hegelian philosophy was introduced to the analysis, and the discussion of Maurizio Sarri's pressing system is full of talk of 'verticality.'

Hazard deconstructed all of that. Here was genius, pure and simple. And it is the uncomplicated aspect of the new manager in which he is self-evidently taking great delight. Early on Saturday evening, Hazard was walking the Stamford Bridge back corridors with a wide grin on his face and his children in tow when he stopped to relate how Sarri simply wants to get on with the important things in life. 'It is so simple,' Hazard said. 'We just need to play quicker, move forward quicker, the manager doesn't like it when we just keep the ball at the back. He wants it moving forward.'

This was the same Hazard who, just 51 days ago, looked us square in the face in the mixed zone at the St Petersburg Arena after Belgium's World Cup third-place match victory over England and told us it was probably the moment to leave London. 'It is maybe time to change something. You know my preferred destination.'

The change of outlook is extraordinary, given that the individual who has helped bring it about is a 59-year-old who, in his early 40s was working full-time as a financial manager for Banca Toscana, and who shuffles around on match-days in off-white trainers and baggy tracksuit bottoms that look more like pyjamas.

He talks plain sense, though. The press box, just a dozen rows or so behind the dugout, provided graphic evidence of that, too. Sarri was intent on instructing players and though professionals will tell you they have devices to pretend they have not heard a manager, this group - to a man - stopped, listened and signalled recognition.

There is a defensive weakness about Chelsea for more dangerous sides than Bournemouth to exploit. Sarri's high defensive line is a tightrope, requiring defenders who can retreat with pace against a team who can find a ball in behind it. Antonio Rudiger possesses that quality, though he will not be able to hold back a tide on his own.

It doesn't help that Alonso, a fine attacking wing-back, is a fairly average defender. Adam Smith had the beating of him. N'Golo Kante rescued one dangerous situation. Joshua King blew another.

'I think we need to be careful with the distribution of the ball when we are in the pressing phase,' Sarri admitted. 'Sometimes we had the right full back cut out the cross and end up getting into our box. It was a little bit dangerous with high pressing ending in a counter-attack because of the ball from the centre back. We need to improve in this.'

Eddie Howe looked crushed by the defeat, in which Pedro's deflected goal broke the deadlock, and said he thinks the gulf between the so-called big six and the rest is widening. 'I think it's incredibly difficult to get points off them. I think it's getting harder, so there is a gap in quality, for sure.' But there are reasons for optimism for the Bournemouth manager, who seems to have bought wisely this summer. Spanish left back Diego Rico - £10.7million from Leganes - looks an excellent acquisition, with defensive ability to go with the wing-back mentality which we did not fully see here.

Sarri's demeanour impresses more. His arrival at the pinnacle of management has come so very late and that seems to give him perspective. The international break is no great use to him with 17 players away, he said, but he'll be taking the chance to walk his dog, Ciro. 'A real Neapolitan name,' he grinned.

Opening a campaign with a maximum 12 points has brought Chelsea the title on four out of five occasions in the Premier League era and Hazard was a little more willing than his manager to talk about a sixth. 'We want to be champion at the end even though we know it is hard,' he said. 'We will see at the end but we want to be on the top.'