Hope For Sarri Despite Loss?  (Sky Sports)

Maurizio Sarri showed Chelsea do have a Plan B at Wembley. Even in defeat, did the Italian help his cause? Gerard Brand gives his verdict from Wembley...

Approaching 120 minutes at Wembley, Maurizio Sarri was heading into a win-win situation.

Victory on penalties against Manchester City in the Carabao Cup final, completely unprecedented after a 6-0 defeat a fortnight ago, and his approach would have been heralded.

Lose, and he still would have received praise for making Chelsea look solid when they have so often looked brittle. A slight reprieve during a testing period.

But Kepa Arrizabalaga, and the "misunderstanding" which surrounded what appeared to be an act of dissent, changed the narrative.

It was bizarre and newsworthy, but those few mad minutes aside, Chelsea's performance on Sunday should not be ignored. Some members of the press may have questioned Sarri's playing-down of the Kepa incident, but few could reject the praise of his own team.

"I think that if you saw the match, you can understand very well that today the players played exactly the match that we prepared yesterday," Sarri said. "So I think I am fully comfortable of the situation.

"I am really very happy and proud of my players. The performance was really very good against, in my opinion, the best team in Europe."

'Proud of my players' are words we never expected to hear from Sarri given his public criticism in recent weeks.

This was a performance of sensibility and grit. Sarri dropped the stubbornness and made Chelsea stubborn themselves, frustrating City in the first half and forcing them to sway side to side without breaking through the middle.

Eden Hazard was forced to play a lonely role throughout, but that only seemed to frustrate him into Cup Final mode, where every time he received the ball something went Chelsea's way.

From Chelsea's end, the narrative before Sunday's cup final centred around whether Sarri would go with the same again. He didn't, and with it he has boosted his chances of surviving in the job.

Tired of talking about Kepa, Sarri explained the shift in approach after the game.

"Now I'd like to speak about something else, about our way of football today, because it was a little bit different from other matches.

"Today we decided not to press very high in every situation, in which the opponent goalkeeper was involved. They are very able to use to the goalkeeper, and to come out from our pressing, so we decided to wait at every pass back and goal kick wait 20 metres lower than usual.

"I think we conceded nothing against the best team in Europe."

Chelsea made less passes in 90 minutes at Wembley than at the Etihad a fortnight ago (380 to 535), but their accuracy was far higher (88.4% to 82.4%).

As the Italian said, Chelsea did sit 20-30 yards further back, and put a cork in City's attacking flow down the left as N'Golo Kante and Pedro worked hard to nullify Oleksandr Zinchenkho's service into Raheem Sterling and David Silva.

It worked for 120 minutes against a side who have a Quadruple in their sights. Sarri should be commended, but his approach for Wednesday's home clash against Tottenham will be even more intriguing.

City are quite clearly a superior side, but against their bitter rivals in front of a home crowd, a solid approach may not go down well. Does he stick, or twist? This is where Sarri can prove to Chelsea's decision makers that he is the man for the job.