Arrizabalaga farce teaches Chelsea and Sarri the value of compromise | Jacob Steinberg

Chelsea’s manager has faced a mutinous goalkeeper, unrest in the stands and a board with a potentially itchy trigger finger. Harmony has been restored but for how long?

It can be difficult to maintain perspective when Chelsea enter crisis mode. Just as it was inevitable that Kepa Arrizabalaga’s Carabao Cup final mutiny would be portrayed in some quarters as evidence of football’s moral decay, so it is easy to fall into the trap of mistaking a resilient win over Tottenham as definitive proof of a unified dressing room.

Hold steady. The mood can change quickly at Chelsea, who have often given the impression of thriving on chaos during the Roman Abramovich era, and beating Spurs is unlikely to lull Maurizio Sarri into a false sense of security given he has spent most of his debut season in the Premier League pleading for patience. These are still dangerous times for a manager who cannot even make a simple substitution without it sparking an intense public-relations exercise.

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from Football | The Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/football/2019/feb/28/chelsea-maurizio-sarri-compromise-goalkeeper