Man Utd’s Manuel Ugarte in doubt to face Brentford after suffering knock vs Ecuador
The nature of his injury remains unclear, but it raises concerns over his availability for Saturday’s clash at Old Trafford.
A lone strike from Chelsea winger Pedro was the difference between the Blues and Australian side Perth Glory in the first game of the Maurizio Sarri era in West London and the Italian tactician admitted he saw plenty of positives from their pre-season fixture Down Under.
“The result was not the mirror of the game, but it’s more important in this period the performance,” the Chelsea head coach said after the tie.
After two tumultuous but successful seasons under Antonio Conte, the club decided to part ways and appointed Sarri as his successor.
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While Conte preferred a 3-4-3 or a 3-1-4-2 system, Sarri has almost always gone with a 4-3-3.
“I am satisfied by the performance in the first half and the first 15 minutes of the second half, not the last 30 minutes,” the former Napoli manager added.
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And Monday was the first time the Blues shifted to a four-man defence and while they did tail off in the second-half, Sarri was not perturbed as he said it was still early days.
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“We lost the distance between the defenders and the midfielders, but we know we have to work. We have to go back to Cobham and work very hard. We know we have to improve very quickly.”
Remarkably, the West Londoners went to Australia to play just one friendly and will now jet back to Europe. They next play Inter Milan on Saturday.
“I expect us to improve match by match. It’s not easy at this moment because we are without 12 players from the World Cup.It has been a difficult week with a long flight, jet lag, but at the end of the week I can say we have worked well, and we have played a good match for 60 minutes.”
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