When it was clear that Malang Sarr would not be getting regular game time at Chelsea, the defender sought it elsewhere.
Having arrived at Stamford Bridge from OGC Nice on a free, a return to the French league made the most sense, where AS Monaco decided to gamble on him.
Arriving on loan with an obligation to buy under certain conditions, the 23-year-old will have been hoping to play a lot to impress and secure a permanent move away from Chelsea.
However, that isn’t what’s happened to date, with Sarr appearing in just a quarter of the Ligue 1 starting line-ups to date, and failing to impress when called upon.
He was given a chance on Sunday as Monaco faced Angers, but everything went wrong for him, with L’Equipe giving him a very bad 2/10 for his performance.
They state the Chelsea loanee was ‘out of sync on a missed pass from Jakobs, close to costing a penalty against Hunou because of a technical mistake, clumsy and cautioned in the 25th minute’.
In essence, Sarr ‘missed pretty much everything of the small workload he had to do’, with Philippe Clément cutting his misery short by taking him off at half-time.
This is certainly not what the Chelsea man will have wanted from this relatively easy game, and it could certainly cause him manager to think twice about using him going forward.
Monaco eventually won 2-0 thanks to some regular starters coming off the bench to save the day, but it would be surprising to see Sarr in the starting line-up anytime soon in the principality.
