Ian Wright believes Raheem Sterling will be unhappy with the current tactical set-up at Chelsea under Graham Potter.
The England international has struggled to make an impact in recent weeks, scoring just a goal in his last nine games for Chelsea.
Potter has been forced to dismiss suggestions that Sterling is operating as a wing-back in his system, and says that Chelsea’s £50 million summer signing is not overburdened with defensive resposibility.
But Wright believes Potter is failing to get the best out of Sterling and claims opposing teams are exploiting Chelsea’s defensive weakness in wide areas.
‘It’s one of the confusing things what Graham Potter is doing at the moment, I can’t get my head around it,’ Wright said on the Kelly and Wrighty Show ahead of Chelsea’s clash with Arsenal.
‘When I did the analysis on the game [Chelsea’s defeat to Brighton], the full-back area, Brighton just absolutely tore them to shreds because you’ve got Pulisic and Sterling who are supposedly meant to come and try to help Chalobah and Cucurella.
‘It wasn’t happening and I couldn’t understand it.
‘There’s no way he [Sterling] can be happy playing that role, especially when you look at what he’s done at City, and the team he was playing in, everything was really concentrated on offence for him.
‘It must be really strange and tough for him to go to a new club and have to play in a position like that. I hope they can sort that out soon for him.’
‘The thing is with it, the way they played it was so disorganised,’ said Wright. ‘I know they’ve lost one in 10 but the way they played the other day, it’s not good form.
‘If he doesn’t make that more solid [in midfield] and get something going in there, whether it’s Kovacic or Jorginho, Chelsea have got away with playing up the pitch with proper full-backs, I think it’s going to happen again [a heavy defeat].
‘I think it might be papering over cracks, the games up to this point because if he’s that far off it with getting the wing-backs, Thiago Silva being pulled into areas, Chalobah being pulled, they can’t carry on like that because they will get beaten, they’ll get beaten quite heavily.
‘It’s a worry, they’ve got to sort it out quite quickly or it’s not going to be good for them.
‘They’ve had a couple of results where it could’ve gone the other way and that’s what happens sometimes. That’s why you need managers to come out, like Ten Hag, who says what’s wrong even if you win, and I think that’s something Graham Potter has to do.
‘It felt a little bit weird as well, Graham Potter was going back there, the Brighton players were going to have an extra 25 per cent, and the way they closed them down in the first half gave them the impetus. With no wing-backs coming back to help, I can’t understand why he [Potter] did that.’
