Chelsea star lauds Maurizio Sarri with big comparison, explains crucial difference to last season

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Chelsea winger Pedro is seemingly relishing playing under Maurizio Sarri so far this season as he has explained the key difference he has made to Antonio Conte’s methods.

The Blues have started the campaign in fine form, winning all five Premier League games thus far while scoring 14 goals and conceding just four.

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Further, they also got their Europa League run off to a winning start against PAOK on Thursday evening, and so things are going well for Sarri since he arrived to replace compatriot Antonio Conte at Stamford Bridge this past summer.

Having built a reputation and received plenty of praise for his preferred style of play in Italy with the likes of Empoli and Napoli, it hasn’t taken the Italian tactician long to implement his ideas at Chelsea, and Pedro is seemingly loving every minute of it given the tweaks Sarri has made to make them more of an attacking side.

“The team is better than last season,” he is quoted as saying by The Mirror. “With Antonio, we were maybe more compact but we defended always in our own half. That means that when you recover the ball to attack, you have a very long way to the opposition goal. With Sarri, when you recover the ball you are in very good position to attack. You are close to the goal to score, to create chances.

“It is really the same idea as Barcelona under Pep Guardiola. They (Sarri and Guardiola) are very similar in their ideas, their attacking ideas are the same.”

It’s a great observation and insight from Pedro, as that is undoubtedly the big change that Sarri has overseen. It can’t have been easy to transform the side’s style of play so early on, but he continues to get positive results and they’ll arguably only get better with more time and as confidence grows.

As for the Barcelona and Guardiola comparison, that is huge praise indeed from a player who knows those methods well after great success with the Catalan giants. Pedro will be hoping that Sarri is able to replicate that trophy haul too in addition to the entertaining brand of football.

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