Maurizio Sarri says Ross Barkley and especially Ruben Loftus-Cheek need to emulate improvements N’Golo Kante has made to his game.
Kante, deployed in a more attacking role by Sarri, scored Chelsea’s winner in their 1-0 victory at Crystal Palace.
And Blues boss Sarri wants two of his other midfielders to follow Kante’s lead.
“He (Kante) is improving, especially in movements without the ball. Today the movement was really very good. It was done with the right timing,” said Sarri.
“For us it’s really very important for midfielders to have movement without the ball.
“I think now we have to work on Loftus and on Barkley for this. Especially Loftus. He is a very great player with the ball but I think he can improve a lot in the movement without the ball.”
Loftus-Cheek, who spent last season on loan at Palace, was unavailable for the game at Selhurst Park because of injury.
So too were Pedro, Cesc Fabregas and Callum Hudson-Odoi, while Olivier Giroud was taken off with an ankle injury.
Sarri admitted that the growing injury list puts Chelsea “in trouble” during a busy spell of matches and revealed he would speak to the club doctor for an update on Sunday evening.
This post was last modified on 31/12/2018