Sarri happy with performance against Malmo FF, sees plenty of room for improvement

Maurizio Sarri was happy to see his Chelsea side produce a confident, if not exactly awe-inspiring performance Thursday night in Sweden, as the Blues beat these Sky Blues 2-1, after suffering so greatly at the hands of the other Sky Blues on Sunday.

No one’s going to be too impressed by barely beating one of the worst teams left in European competition, but recovering from a 6-0 beatdown isn’t going to be quick or easy and this is a decent first step — including Chelsea’s first away goals of 2019 in five tries. Hurray!

“I am happy because we played with a very good level of confidence and that was not very easy after the last match. Today we had confidence because we moved the ball also inside our box. We played very well, the risk only came from set-pieces because Malmo are more physical than us.

“We could score more but we conceded a goal because of a mistake but today the level of application and attention was good. We made an individual mistake so I think we could win better. We had three or four goal opportunities at 2-0, so we could have killed the match, but I am happy with the confidence.”

It’s almost nice to be worrying again about not killing off a match, rather than worrying about how absolutely terrible the team played!

There’s plenty of room for improvement, to be sure, and some of it will have to come pretty fast considering the murderer’s row of opponents coming up, starting with Monday’s FA Cup clash against Manchester United.

“If we concede a goal like this [the one tonight against Malmo] to a team like Man United, Man City and Tottenham, then you risk conceding three goals in 10 minutes, so we have to do better, but I think the performance was a good performance.”

-Maurizio Sarri; source: Chelsea FC

And of course we have to do what we have only done once in the last month and a half, win back-to-back games.

“Today we played our football. We need to move the ball more forward and back. In the last period we had a problem about up and down, 4-0, 5-0, 6-0, we needed to have continuity and consistency. We need to have the right application. If you have a bad mental application in England you can lose three or four matches. We need to have consistency. It is not easy, but we have to try.”

-Maurizio Sarri; source: Football.London

Onwards and upwards!