For answers to why Robert Sanchez felt a lunge at the feet of Rasmus Hojlund was the best course of action as the Manchester United striker edged away from goal at Old Trafford yesterday, Anfield may be the best place to look.
A fortnight earlier, in almost identical circumstances, the Chelsea goalkeeper had frozen, rooted to his line like a fusball figurine to leave Curtis Jones time to control Mohamed Salah’s cross and bundle home a winning goal.
Sanchez’s hesitancy was heavily criticised at the time and - we are speculating here - perhaps why, when Casemiro floated his own fine ball onto Hojlund’s toe, the Spaniard felt he had no choice.
Except every situation has to be assessed on its merits and, unlike Jones’, Hojlund’s touch was poor. It allowed the ball to run away from him across his body and beyond the width of the far post, from where he would have had to shoot awkwardly on the stretch.
Instead, he saw Sanchez coming and knew he needed only to get a toe to the ball first. That United’s No9 was soon wildly fist-pumping the award of a penalty, having a few seconds earlier been fed the ball six yards out and in the centre of the goal, said plenty for where he feared the chance was headed. Bruno Fernandes scored from the spot and, but for Moises Caicedo’s stunning volleyed equaliser, Chelsea would have lost the game.
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 had flown out at the same player’s feet and almost conceded another penalty, rescued on that occasion by VAR.
There is a fine line in elite sport between between learning from mistakes past and not letting them unduly affect the future.
The great batters can play and miss one delivery but still have the conviction to go hard at the next. Lesser players poke tentatively and nick off. Golfers talk of an imaginary circle around the ball, in which each shot, however good or bad, exists in isolation, unable to influence the last or the next.
Sanchez, though, gives the impression of a man who could duff his opening tee shot and still be stewing over it on the 14th green.
Maresca has repeatedly defended his goalkeeper’s shortcomings ... which is fine, on the condition that efforts are still made to minimise them
And that is not drawing only on the frazzled 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 by his style of play make a level of risk acceptable and mistakes hazards of work.
Which is fine, on the condition that efforts are still made to minimise them. The trouble with Sanchez - and, in fairness, this is an element of human nature that only the steeliest and most wilfully deluded manage to shut out - is that one iffy moment seems to amplify the chance of another. He appears to have an issue with parking errors, with the 4-2 home win over Brighton earlier this season the case in point.
At home matches in particular now, there is a tangible nervousness around the goalkeeper. That cannot be helpful for either Sanchez or his young defence, which has gone eight games without a clean sheet. At 26, Sanchez ought to be its senior man.
He has, it should be said, also single-handedly earned Chelsea points this season, with his penalty save the high point of a man-of-the-match showing in a late 1-0 win at Bournemouth in September.
But if that performance briefly quieted what had been a summer-long debate over who might be Maresca’s No1 then it is alive and raging again now.
The January transfer window is drawing close. When the summer equivalent closed the three most obvious flaws in Chelsea’s squad were a lack of cover at full-back and the absence of a world-class player either up front or in goal. But with Reece James fit and Nicolas Jackson in good form, only the last of those now feels urgent enough to warrant a mid-season upgrade.
Should Sanchez continue in this vein, second-choice Filip Jorgensen may well get a Premier League opportunity even before then.
