Ruben Loftus-Cheek has been speaking about working under Maurizio Sarri since returning form his post-World Cup holiday.
In quotes carried on Football.London, the midfielder spoke about his brief spell working under his new coach, and how it’s been tough trying to get to understand a radically different system:
“It’s a new philosophy, we’re really working hard on the pitch, double sessions to understand it and perfect it, the press and how we want to play, it’s exciting and I can’t wait to improve it.”
It’s good to hear that he’s excited: the players had all started to look a little bit bored under Antonio Conte with all the hard work and defensive shape work they were being asked to put in.
Clearly they are still doing plenty of that under Sarri, but it’s more within the context of an attacking, high press. After some promising moments in the first few friendlies, we saw against Manchester City that there is still a huge amount of work to do – especially defensively.
The return of N’Golo Kante will help, but it’s really just a matter of time and effort on the training pitch. The sooner players like RLC are up to speed, the better.
