by To find out why Robert Sanchez felt a lunge at the feet of Rasmus Hojlund was the best course as the Manchester United striker raced away from goal at Old Trafford yesterday, Anfield is perhaps the best place to look.
Fifteen days earlier, in almost identical circumstances, the Chelsea goalkeeper had frozen, anchored on his line like a football figurine to give Curtis Jones time to control Mohamed Salah’s cross and score a winning goal .
Sanchez’s hesitation was heavily criticized at the time and – we speculate here – perhaps why, when Casemiro launched his own ball onto Hojlund’s point, the Spaniard felt he didn’t have the choice.
Except that every situation must be evaluated on its merits and, unlike Jones’, Hojlund’s touch was mediocre. This allowed the ball to travel away from him across his body and beyond the width of the far post, from where he should have fired awkwardly down the stretch.
Instead, he saw Sanchez coming and knew he just had to get a toe on the ball first. United’s No.9 quickly began brandishing the penalty wildly, having received the ball seconds earlier six yards out and in the center of the goal, spoke volumes about which way he feared the occasion would go. Bruno Fernandes scored from the penalty spot and, had it not been for Moises Caicedo’s superb volleyed equalizer, Chelsea would have lost the match.
The irony is that the delay in Sanchez coming to challenge Jones at the decisive moment against Liverpool seemed itself a response to an incident earlier in that match. Then, he flew at the feet of the same player and almost conceded another penalty, saved on this occasion by the VAR.
In elite sport, there is a fine line between learning from past mistakes and not letting them unduly affect the future.
Great hitters can bowl and miss a delivery, but still have the conviction to go hard on the next one. The little players bite timidly and leave. Golfers speak of an imaginary circle around the ball, in which each shot, good or bad, exists in isolation, incapable of influencing the last or the next.
Sanchez, however, gives the impression of a man who might miss his first tee shot while simmering it on the 14th green.
Maresca has repeatedly defended his goalkeeper’s faults… which is good, provided that efforts are still made to minimize them
And it’s not just based on the exhausted thinking that has now cost Chelsea points in successive away league matches.
Maresca has repeatedly defended his goalkeeper’s erratic distribution, insisting that the demands born of his style of play make a level of risk and work errors acceptable.
Which is fine, as long as you continue to strive to minimize them. The problem with Sanchez – and, frankly, this is an element of human nature that only the hardest and most willfully deceived manage to exclude – is that uncertain timing seems to amplify the chances of ‘another. He appears to have a problem with parking errors, as evidenced in the 4-2 home win over Brighton earlier this season.
Especially during home matches, there is now a tangible nervousness around the goalkeeper. This cannot help either Sanchez or his young defense, which has gone eight games without a clean sheet. At 26, Sanchez should be the oldest.
It must be said, he has also single-handedly won points at Chelsea this season, with his penalty scoring a man-of-the-match highlight in a late 1-0 win at Bournemouth in September.
But if that performance briefly calmed what had been a summer-long debate over who Maresca’s No. 1 might be, he’s alive and raging again now.
The January transfer window is coming to an end. By the end of the summer equivalent, the three most obvious flaws in the Chelsea team were the lack of cover at full-back and the absence of a world-class player up front or in goal. But with Reece James fit and Nicolas Jackson in good form, only the latter of them now looks urgent enough to warrant a mid-season upgrade.
If Sanchez continues in this vein, second choice Filip Jorgensen could well have an opportunity in the Premier League even before then.
