For the first time in a while, Chelsea fans are genuinely excited about having a manager who will play attacking football at their club.
Under Roman Abramovich, they have seen Jose Mourinho, Rafael Benitez and Antonio Conte play concerted football.
Although this brought extraordinary success, Maurizio Sarri’s attacking football has energised the Chelsea fan base with vibrant attacking performances on the horizon.
And one of Sarri’s greatest success as the boss of Napoli was turning Dries Mertens – a winger who would often go large stretches without scoring – into a devastating goal-scorer.
Having scored 34 goals in his first three seasons in Naples, Mertens scored 56 in the last two – scoring 28 in the 2016-17 season and missing out on the Capocannoniere title by one goals.
Sarri will be looking for Alvaro Morata to be that goal-scorer but with his confidence seemingly at rock-bottom, he may deploy Eden Hazard as the central striker.
Hazard has previously played there before and has expressed his displeasure at doing so.
Citing too much time with his back to goal whilst he prefers to be running from deep, Hazard may need convincing to try it again.
And Sarri could just show Hazard a montage of some of the goals his Napoli side scored to whet the Belgians appetite.
For good measure and because I know we all love watching great goals, here’s something Sarri could use:
And with Hazard up top, Willian and Pedro could fill the Lorenzo Insigne and Jose Callejon roles which brought such success to Napoli.
Hazard has never scored more than 20 goals for Chelsea in a season, but that could all change under Sarri’s stewardship.
