Football news - The best 45 minutes of Chelsea's season? Standards have truly slipped under Sarri

Sitting waiting for Maurizio Sarri's latest mumbled excuses, at Goodison Park, the mind tripped back to a place and time some yards from here eight years back.

Carlo Ancelotti had delivered the Premier League and FA Cup double. He had delivered free-scoring, fast-flowing football. And he had done that rarest of things: turned Chelsea into a side football fans – those 'neutrals' we often hear about – actually liked.

Then, in a corridor in this same building, he was fired for finishing second in the league.

Eight years, and seven managers on: Chelsea have nailed-down sixth place, and look unlikely to throw together enough consistency to climb higher than that.

Champions League qualification seems mostly reliant on the one thing that has evaded their present boss in two decades of trying: winning a trophy.

And then, snapping out of that historical daze, in walked the club's latest Italian.

Blah blah, wrong mentality; blah blah need to improve. And then, a bombshell.

After months of insistence that we had not really seen the fabled 'Sarriball', the suggestion that this had been it. Or the first half, at least.

Chelsea did pass the ball about well, and had a series of wasted chances, against an Everton side that seemed to be phoning-in it's performance.

This, we were told, was Chelsea's 'best' 45 minutes of the season.

That this is what the Chelsea manager was aspiring to: a goalless draw against a team unable to beat top-six opposition in two years, said a great deal.

New red lines have been crossed at several points this season.

From the admission that his own players cannot be motivated by him; to the confession that he knew not why increasing record defeats had transpired in January and February; to this latest admission that mediocrity was no failing, but an aspiration – Sarri has seemed to goad his employers.

Any one of those statements would have brought the sack for any one of his dozen predecessors.

And, when Everton finally found the right gear, they ran down Chelsea with ease.

The visitors' second-half performance called to mind another 2-0 defeat here, which saw-off a another Chelsea boss.

Six years ago at Goodison, Andre Villas-Boas was seen to have lost complete control of his team: as they dawdled around the pitch, in the latter stages, seemingly playing to no particular system or style.

The Portuguese was fired two games later; but, rest assured, the decision was taken that day on Merseyside.

The expectations and aspirations have sunk though, at English football's most successful club of the last 15 years, and the only question is how far.

The false dawn of recent weeks: the goalless draw against Manchester City at Wembley, and win over Tottenham included (both, lest we forget, using a different system to Sarri's signature one) seems little more than a memory.

As so often this season, performances have taken a step forward – only to take two in reverse.

Chelsea's football is now worse than when this Sarriball experiment commenced in August.

Decisions about next season may have already been taken – Chelsea seem to like making these calls at Goodison. But we're likely to have to wait for any actions to show through.

It is in the summer that we'll find out just how far those standards have slipped at Chelsea.