Maurizio Sarri said all the right things. That Callum Hudson-Odoi has a bright future with Chelsea. That he has improved. That he can now be considered a rival to Willian and Pedro.
'I can play with only two wingers,' Sarri announced. 'Three is difficult but now he is ready. He can play, but of course sometimes he will be on the bench.'
For a man who worked in banking, however, Sarri's numbers leave a little to be desired. Eden Hazard also likes to play wide, unless Sarri is admitting he will spend the rest of his Chelsea career as a central forward.
Then there is Christian Pulisic, who is a wide player and will arrive in the summer.
So by next season, if Chelsea retain their talent and buy a striker, the equation is five into two, which suggests one pair of wingers won't even make substitute.
'It's about patience,' said Sarri's assistant, Gianfranco Zola, last week. No, it isn't. At Chelsea, it's about winning at all costs, and the folly of patience is what they trick you with; ask Ruben Loftus-Cheek.
It's like the three-cup scam. Give them a swirl. Now where is your opportunity hiding? Beneath the one on the left? Bad luck. Try again and, this time, I won't move them. Right, you say? Wrong again. Must be the middle one, then? No. Looks like your chance was never there at all. But, hey, what's that behind your ear?
Yet they keep falling for it, these young men. Loftus-Cheek is 23 this month, has 10 England appearances mainly on the back of regular football on loan at Crystal Palace, but is still waiting for his breakthrough. The fact is, no academy prospect has emerged to win a regular place at Chelsea in the Roman Abramovich era. John Terry is cited as the success story, but had already made 118 first-team appearances when the club changed hands.
The assurances Hudson-Odoi is receiving have been heard plenty of times before, from a host of managers. Even if Sarri believed in a young player - as Carlo Ancelotti did Josh McEachran, for instance - he could be gone on the back of one bad season, or a poor run of results.
Chelsea managers do not get the time to indulge hunches about youth talent. Antonio Conte favoured Andreas Christensen. Where is he now?
Last week, Dominic Solanke signed for Bournemouth. Good luck to him for refusing to settle, good luck to them for keeping faith in young English talent. Solanke was at Chelsea too, but when he identified a dead end, switched to Liverpool in 2017 in search of first-team opportunity.
That also petered out, so now he is at Bournemouth in a £19million permanent deal that has raised eyebrows. Strange, isn't it, this attitude to English youth? We demand they seek opportunity, not settle for the comfort of the extended squad, yet castigate Bournemouth and Solanke over what is seen as an inflated fee. How can Bournemouth pay £19m for a player who has not featured in a game for Liverpool this season?
Leaving aside how difficult it is for a young player to get in at Anfield ahead of Mo Salah, Roberto Firmino, Sadio Mane, Daniel Sturridge or even Divock Origi, who exactly were Bournemouth to buy?
There is an Icelandic striker at Augsburg in Germany, for instance, who is being touted this January. Alfred Finnbogason interested Celtic two seasons ago and some struggling Premier League clubs have made enquiries. Yet he will be 30 on February 1 and the asking price is £15m.
Should Bournemouth have gone for that type of player or tried to work with what we have here?
Solanke will in all likelihood be England's Under 21 striker at the European Championship in Italy this summer. He keeps out Dominic Calvert-Lewin, who has featured in 21 games for Everton this season. He may yet be the player to reverse Bournemouth's fortunes and if Eddie Howe can realise his potential in a way that Chelsea and Liverpool could not, will then be worth several times more than his most recent fee.
Either way, this is a career choice that should be encouraged. Hudson-Odoi has an option too, but it would mean Chelsea losing him to Bayern Munich. What a pity if another member of a hugely promising generation of English footballers feels he has no option but to go abroad. A pity, but understandable.
With Solanke it is different. He has stayed here, even dropped out of the elite, because at 21 he wants to play.
There is a time for patience, but also a time when it is entitled to run out. Solanke has done the maths, as Hudson-Odoi surely will, too.
The World Jewish Congress made it very clear. 'The word yid has for years been re-appropriated from its original Yiddish to carry a distinctly pejorative and anti-Semitic message, and its use by fans in the stands, either as a self-designated nickname or as a slogan against rivals must not be tolerated in any way.'
So how can Tottenham's fans claim to be defending Jews with their 'Yid Army' chants - particularly as the overwhelming number are gentiles anyway? What are they to do now? Presume to continue lecturing Semites on the precise nature of anti-Semitism? Fake the reclamation of a word that was never theirs in the first place? That really would take some chutzpah, as the majority of Spurs fans wouldn't say.
Penalty row left Mitrovic on spot
Is it really any surprise that a missed penalty preceded Fulham's FA Cup exit to Oldham on Sunday? The drama over the taker during the match with Huddersfield on December 29 - Aboubakar Kamara refused to hand the ball over to Aleksandar Mitrovic, and then missed - has made it too much of an issue.
Mitrovic will have had all that on his mind when he stepped up against Oldham - particularly as there were six minutes to go, and the scores were tied 1-1. What should have been a straightforward conversion was imbued with added pressure, and Fulham have enough of that already.
VAR can make game fairer, but not better
The confusion around VAR is such that Alvaro Morata made an appeal for its use against Nottingham Forest on Saturday, when it was not in operation. Why, who knows? As a Premier League ground, Stamford Bridge has the capacity for it yet the FA decided only six ties would be subject to it on Saturday. Chelsea's was not among them. Why ration the truth?
Equally problematic is the procedure. VAR may utilise technology, but it also involves humanity, and humans are flaky. It was utterly ridiculous that Simon Hooper, the referee at Burnley's match with Barnsley, should allow the penalty-taking ritual to unfold, without alerting the players that a VAR review into the award was also taking place. It meant the penalty was aborted as Matej Vydra ran up to take it. Suppose that verdict had arrived two seconds later, by which time Vydra had scored? Try explaining that to the crowd.
The greatest flaw with VAR, however, was revealed by Mark Clattenburg on these pages. Analysing a VAR call at Manchester United, he wrote: 'Once a goal is scored, the VAR process kicks in and the video referee must check three things: Was there a foul in the build-up? Was the ball out of play? Was there an offside?' In other words, the message is: 'A goal has been scored - how can we disallow it?'
So while you may be getting more accuracy next season, what you certainly won't be getting is more goals, because VAR exists to chalk them off, not put them on. If a referee has mistakenly given a free-kick against a team on a counter-attack, that decision stands and that advantage cannot be recreated; if the team scores, however, the duty of VAR is to try to locate an infringement 40 yards down the field in an earlier phase of play, and rule it out. Will it make the game fairer? Possibly. Will it make it better? Not if Clattenburg's understanding is the way it genuinely works.
Claude Puel will be vilified for fielding a weakened team and making seven changes in Leicester's loss to Newport, but with the FA Cup arriving on the back of such a punishing Christmas schedule it is hard to see how managers have much alternative.
Anyway, the statistics do not always support consistency. For instance, 60 per cent of teams making four changes from their last league game won; as opposed to just 25 per cent of teams making three changes.
As for the 17 clubs that made eight changes or more this weekend, 10 won and only six lost - and two of the six losers were playing clubs from the same division, while Rotherham faced Manchester City away. It is always a gamble to field a lesser team in the FA Cup, but it should not guarantee calamity. Look at Leicester's starting XI against Newport: Puel will not be alone in thinking they had more than enough to win.
Canny West Ham show how to save the FA Cup
Unnoticed on Saturday was a little FA Cup miracle: 54,840 tickets sold at the London Stadium to watch West Ham play Birmingham City. Only Manchester United, at home to Reading, attracted a bigger gate.
The method behind it was hardly rocket science. Competitive pricing for a low-key match. West Ham sold kids tickets for £1 and discounted adult sales to as little as £10. Their reward was a largely full stadium, down just four per cent from the gate for the previous League match with Brighton, on a weekend when declining interest in the FA Cup was again a topic.
And is it any wonder, now the Christmas period is busier than ever? West Ham, like all clubs, will have played four games in less than two weeks, two of which will have been at home. Then, days later, an FA Cup tie. No wonder fans feel fatigued, financially and physically. The players are exhausted and many of the best ones rested, and if the opposition is weak, teams as good as field the reserves. Who wants to pay top dollar for that?
West Ham attracted much criticism last week after it was revealed the club charges £700 to be a matchday mascot - Leicester's fee is £600, but that did not receive half the condemnation, perhaps because it does not suit the positive narrative about the club's ownership - but being a mascot is a perk, a bonus. The overwhelming majority of supporters will have followed teams all their lives without getting to run out with the captain on match day. It is far healthier, and reaches many more kids, to let them watch football on the cheap. The FA Cup isn't dying, as some would have you believe, and it doesn't require radical restructure. Just a bit of thought.
Despite their difficulties, Fulham are considering ending Timothy Fosu-Mensah's loan spell early, after just nine appearances. When he broke into the team at Manchester United as a teenager, he looked a potential world-beater. What an inexplicable decline it has been.
Ipswich rue losing 'dull' McCarthy
Another thrilling weekend for Ipswich. Having driven out Mick McCarthy last season on the grounds his football wasn't exciting enough, the adventures just keep coming.
On Saturday, Ipswich succumbed to a thrilling 1-0 FA Cup defeat at Accrington Stanley. The club is already on its second manager of the season, is 10 points shy of safety, bottom of the Championship and has won two League games all season. Owner Marcus Evans is so excited by it all, he wants to sell.
The fact is, McCarthy was doing a very creditable job in trying circumstances, as he has through much of his career. When he left Millwall in 1995-96 they were 14 points off relegation, and ended up going down. He departed Wolves in 2012 when they had just entered the relegation zone in 18th place on goal difference, but had the same points total as Queens Park Rangers in 16th. They went down too, bottom of the league, 12 points plus goal difference adrift of safety.
As for Ipswich, they were 12th when McCarthy left last season and have won three games since. There are a lot of managers out there who make poorly run clubs seem good, and never get the credit for it. McCarthy's detractors at Ipswich craved excitement. Now, it would seem, they have more than they can handle.
