Andy Gray urges Chelsea to hold training sessions without Jorginho
Jorginho reunited with Maurizio Sarri at Chelsea in the summer and the Italian has been one of the most familiar faces on the manager’s team sheet this season.
Sarri has assigned Jorginho with the central role in his midfield three, forcing N’Golo Kante to play in an unfamiliar position on the right.
Chelsea’s possession-based football has revolved around Jorginho but the Italian has suffered a dip in his performance curve in recent weeks, with Sarri claiming that he is tired and the club need to sign a cover to reduce his workload.
And beIN SPORTS pundit Andy Gray has urged Maurizio Sarri to hold some training sessions without Jorginho, which would not only reduce the overreliance on the Italian but would also give Chelsea an alternative option to carry out an effective plan ‘B’.
“When you’re Jorginho, the one thing he doesn’t have is pace,” Gray said on beIN SPORTS.
“He’s not quick around the football pitch.
“He depends on his football brain, his positional sense and his ability to, what I would say, lend the football.
“He kind of lends it to his team-mate, takes another position and gets it back again and then tries to find a pass.
“He didn’t do that [against Newcastle], he gave the ball away first half very, very cheaply.
“And it looked like Sarri was really concerned about that because he is so pivotal to what they do.
“Everything surrounds him [Jorginho] at times and I think Chelsea have got to be careful that they don’t put all their footballing eggs in one basket and depend on him to that extent in their creativity because teams will do what they’re doing to them.
“They’ll make life difficult for them and then they won’t be able to function as well.
“But they’re going to have to sit down and say ‘do you know what, I’m going to take you out the team’, even out of the training, just doing some sessions without Jorginho in the side.
“‘Let’s do a few sessions at the training ground, keep Jorginho out of it and we’re going to build up a little differently so when he’s not involved in the game, we know we’ve got other options to do’.
“And I think they’ll probably do that, I’d be amazed if they did not.”
