After seeing his side go down 2-0 to Arsenal, Maurizio Sarri launched into an attack on his players, accusing them of being ‘difficult to motivate’.

Such was his dismay with his players attitude, he even went so far as to declare that when analysing the reasons for Arsenal’s win, ‘tactics don’t come into it’.

It’s the kind of statement that could have been lifted straight from the Jose Mourinho manual on shifting blame, absolving himself of fault and putting it all on his players.

Frankly though this would be an incredibly shortsighted way of looking at how the game had played out, as Chelsea were not just outplayed at the Emirates, but out-thought as well.

Both Sarri and his opposite number, Unai Emery, went into the match with a clear tactical plan, but only Emery’s plan was tailored to that specific match while Chelsea persevered with Sarri-Ball.

Chelsea and Sarri’s stubbornness on full display

There is nothing wrong with having a set style of play. Manchester City have proved that under Pep Guardiola. Problems come when you don’t have a Plan B, which Sarri’s Chelsea have shown several times now that they do not and teams have begun to punish them for it.

Most teams in the Premier League have come to the realisation that Sarri-Ball centres around the use of what is know in Italy as a Regista, a deep-lying playmaker who dictates the play and tempo, the role given to Jorginho in this Chelsea side.

Stifle Jorginho and you can upset the balance of the whole Chelsea team, disrupting their planned routes of attack and tempo. Mark Jorginho tightly enough and he’s unavailable to receive a pass from the defence, or is pressured and prevented from passing forward in possession, becoming a passenger in midfield.

He is certainly not helped by being the key figure in initiating Chelsea attacks, regularly having the most touches in the Chelsea side, with no help coming from those around him.

Mateo Kovacic has offered little to Jorginho’s left, while N’Golo Kante is clearly uncomfortable as a box-to-box midfielder to his right yet Sarri refuses to change anything despite seeing the warning signs since the 3-1 defeat at Tottenham in November.

Arsenal on point to exploit Chelsea’s weaknesses

Arsenal followed the blue-print established by Tottenham, playing Aaron Ramsey as an advanced midfielder tasked with sticking with Jorginho, preventing the ball getting to him and pressing the Italian if he was in possession.

Nullifying Jorginho though, was just part of the Arsenal game-plan. Behind Ramsey, the narrow three of Lucas Torreira, Granit Xhaka and Matteo Guendouzi gave Arsenal a numerical advantage in midfield.

This meant Chelsea had an overload in wide positions, as Cesar Azpilicueta and  Marcos Alonso pushed forward, but Arsenal seemed content to allow space out wide so they could pack central areas.

It also meant Arsenal could deploy Alexandre Lacazette and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang as a genuine strike partnership, rather than pushing the Gabonese out wide.

It was a ploy that worked, particularly since Chelsea couldn’t produce anything decisive out wide, their lack of numbers in the box or a proper striker again coming back to haunt them.

When Arsenal inevitably regained possession they found space behind Chelsea easy to come by, particularly in the areas vacated by the full-backs. Arsenal’s mobile front two could run into and while neither of Arsenal’s goals came this way, the threat was always there for Chelsea.

Hazard’s role again fails to inspire

With Olivier Giroud and Alvaro Morata again sidelined, Eden Hazard was deployed centrally as a false 9 but the Belgian offered little justification for Sarri sticking with him there.

It’s another example of the unbending nature of the Italian manager, who is so dogmatically attached to his style and system he fails to react when teams line-up to counter it.

Hazard offers skill, trickery and exceptional finishing ability but all of this talent is wasted when he is marginalised from the match in this central role. He needs the ball at his feet to influence games, but he is denied it in the current Chelsea system.

His tendency to drop deep creates the problem of having no presence in the penalty-area. Against an Arsenal team happy to cede space wide, Chelsea found themselves with plenty of crossing opportunities but could not capitalise on any of them.

Hazard was either outside of the box or simply crowded out within it, overpowered by Sokratis and Laurent Koscielny as Chelsea’s wide players swung in aerial balls that a Morata or a Giroud could have attacked had they been selected.

If Sarri is to persist with Hazard centrally, they could learn a lot from how Manchester City cross the ball, which seems in part designed to account for a lack of height in the City team.

City’s wingers push all the way to the by-line inside the opposition box before cutting the ball back into an area between the penalty spot and 6 yard box. City’s attackers don’t need to be able to out-jump the opposition defenders, they just need to find space for the cutback to find them. Chelsea on the other hand just kept lumping balls into the box, making it all to easy for Arsenal to defend against them.

Chelsea need to change

There is a lot of speculation about Chelsea’s next move, in particular the talk of a move for Gonzalo Higuain has ramped up over the last week, offering an obvious solution to the problems at centre-forward.

But Sarri has to accept that the secret is out. The whole of the Premier League now knows how to stop Chelsea’s Sarri-Ball and Jorginho will surely be targeted.

Sarri needs to change his approach, particularly against stronger teams who offer more threat in attack, but the Italian’s resistance so far to altering his plan offers little hope he will do so.