Ian Wright has admitted he doesn't see the value in playing Raheem Sterling out of position at Chelsea as the English winger prepares to face Arsenal at Stamford Bridge.
Sterling scored his first goal in 10 matches against Dinamo Zagreb but is still yet to register in the league under Graham Potter. The new boss has been finding his feet with the current squad and hasn't been helped by the injury troubles throughout.
In a mix of trying to exploit his opponents' weaknesses and balancing Chelsea's side without Reece James or N'Golo Kante, Potter has turned to using attackers in an unorthodox wingback role, but that was shown up in a dismal first half against Brighton.
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One of the players shifted and shunted around the most has been Sterling, who Thomas Tuchel signed for £45m over the summer. Even the German strayed from playing Sterling as a standard left-winger, the position he scored 109 league goals from.
Now, with the World Cup approaching and a London derby against Arsenal on the horizon first, the microscope will be back on Sterling and how he is deployed, but Gunners legend Ian Wright doesn't see the benefit of playing him out of position.
"I wouldn’t say I'm experimenting; I do have an idea of how I want us to play football," the Blues head coach explained ahead of the Premier League clash against Arsenal on Sunday. "I think it depends on where the players are at and what we have and when injured ones come back.
"It’s one of the confusing things what Graham Potter is doing at the moment, I can’t get my head around it," Wright said on the Kelly and Wrighty Show. "When I did the analysis on the game [Chelsea’s defeat to Brighton], the full-back area, Brighton just absolutely tore them to shreds because you’ve got Pulisic and Sterling who are supposedly meant to come and try to help Chalobah and Cucurella.
"It wasn’t happening and I couldn’t understand it. There’s no way he [Sterling] can be happy playing that role, especially when you look at what he’s done at City, and the team he was playing in, everything was really concentrated on offence for him.
"It must be really strange and tough for him to go to a new club and have to play in a position like that. I hope they can sort that out soon for him."
When asked about trying to find a balance ahead of the game and whether experimentation was the right word, Potter explained, "I wouldn’t say I'm experimenting; I do have an idea of how I want us to play football. I think it depends on where the players are at and what we have and when injured ones come back.
"I think you have to remember when you are trying to do something new, there will be a chance it goes wrong. You always have to be prepared for that. That sounds a bit strange because you should come across as this all-knowing person with all the answers but the reality of making progress and the reality of doing something different and new is you have to prepare to be an idiot.
"If it goes wrong or it fails then you are open to criticism. The flip side of that is if you don’t anything and you just do the same stuff then nothing changes. And it's that balance. You have to have the courage to do that and accept the consequences when it doesn’t go your way."
Potter has used attackers in those positions before at Brighton and already at Chelsea with success, but the defensive lack of shape and structure highlighted that when it goes wrong, it's a dangerous game to play.
"The thing is with it, the way they played it was so disorganised," added Wright. "I know they’ve lost one in 10 [now 11] but the way they played the other day, it’s not good form.
"If he doesn’t make that more solid [in midfield] and get something going in there, whether it’s Kovacic or Jorginho, Chelsea have got away with playing up the pitch with proper full-backs, I think it’s going to happen again [a heavy defeat], I think it might be papering over cracks, the games up to this point because if he’s that far off it with getting the wing-backs, Thiago Silva being pulled into areas, Chalobah being pulled, they can’t carry on like that because they will get beaten, they’ll get beaten quite heavily.
"It’s a worry, they’ve got to sort it out quite quickly or it’s not going to be good for them. They’ve had a couple of results where it could’ve gone the other way and that’s what happens sometimes. That’s why you need managers to come out, like Ten Hag, who says what’s wrong even if you win, and I think that’s something Graham Potter has to do.
"It felt a little bit weird as well, Graham Potter was going back there, the Brighton players were going to have an extra 25 per cent, and the way they closed them down in the first half gave them the impetus. With no wing-backs coming back to help, I can’t understand why he [Potter] did that."
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