Chelsea’s future defender shows his best and worst in 6.5 rated defeat | OneFootball

Strasbourg were unlucky to lose against Lyon on Sunday night after putting in a good performance and then getting a red and conceding in the last minute.

We were particularly interested to see Chelsea’s on loan Mamadou Sarr play well at centre back, after a weekend where Chelsea’s defenders came in for some criticism.

Sarr has up and down game from Lyon

Mamadou Sarr strides through midfield. (Photo by Darren Walsh/Chelsea FC)

Sarr made a mistake which allowed Lyon to score their first, but showed all his quality after that. He played the most passes in the match with 69, and was accurate with 95% of them. Sadly one of the incomplete efforts was one that Lyon picked off to equalise with.

He totalled 7 defensive contributions, completed a dribble and won 3 of his 5 ground duels. We think any Chelsea scout there would have enjoyed what they saw in the main. Sarr will have been gutted to see his team concede a last minute winner to Lyon.

He’s still young and raw, but the talent is clear. We’re going to have to be patient and hope he continues to make big strides through the rest of this year. It’s hard to see him being consistent enough to make a difference for Chelsea yet.

WhoScored have him down as just the 21st best centre back in Ligue 1 this season. But he’s just 20, and has lots of growth still to come. We wonder who else the club considers to be in the pipeline, or how much they’re thinking about Wesley Fofana’s long term future behind the scenes.

In other news…

We’ve just been writing that Chelsea need a dominant aerial player to come in and be a physical monster to compete in this league – could Sarr develop into that? He’s got the frame for it, if he hits the gym.

As we’ve been writing here, it’s not just the defence which is struggling. We’re not creating enough in attack and the stats reflect that.