Maurizio Sarri and his beleaguered Chelsea players held an hour-long inquest this week into the humiliating defeat at Manchester City on Sunday, with the head coach putting that six-goal drubbing down to his squad’s mental fragility.

The Italian’s side now face a critical tie with Malmö in the last 32 of the Europa League, before daunting domestic fixtures in league and cups against Manchester United, City and Tottenham, as they attempt to arrest recent desperate form. Marcos Alonso, who endured a torrid afternoon against the champions and was culpable in the lack of marking for City’s opening goal, has been omitted from the travelling squad, though Sarri claimed he had been rested rather than dropped.

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The head coach returned to a familiar theme when addressing his team’s capitulation at the Etihad Stadium, suggesting their performance had disintegrated from the moment City gained the ascendancy, though he could offer no real evidence as to how to avoid a repeat.

“We talked all together for one hour the day after the match,” said Sarri. “But I think that it’s better to work. Better to react on the pitch. It’s not been too easy this week, of course, but after a match like Manchester City, that’s normal.

“It’s not easy to play tomorrow after a 6-0 but we have to play and we have to play well. We want to win and react immediately. In my opinion the last game was not a problem of motivation. We were not able to react to the first difficulty during the match because, in the first four or five minutes, we’d actually started well. Then, after their first goal, we were not able to react. So the problem is different. But it’s always a mind problem, a mental problem, so we need to solve them.”

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Asked to elaborate, he added: “I think, sometimes, as the match we lost at Tottenham in the Premier League [showed], we had not the right approach, not the right determination. The match at City, in my opinion, was different. We had very good training sessions during the week. We arrived at the match with the right level of motivation. Then we conceded a goal after five minutes and were not able to do anything.”

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Sarri, seven months into a three-year deal at Stamford Bridge, was watched by the chairman, Bruce Buck, from the audience as he conducted his pre-match media duties on the eve of the first leg against Malmö. The Italian distanced himself from suggestions made to Italian television that he would welcome more direct contact with Roman Abramovich and stressed he was happy using the director, Marina Granovskaia, as a conduit to the owner.

“I never said I’d never [spoken to Abramovich],” he said with the Russian, who now boasts Israeli citizenship, having not attended a Chelsea game all season. “Just not in this week. Not in the last three weeks. But I usually speak with Marina and that is enough.”

Granovskaia was instrumental in his appointment over the summer and, while Abramovich would always make the final decision on the head coach’s future, the sense is there is no great appetite to instigate a mid-season change of management.

Yet the hierarchy will expect to see evidence of improvement, meaning the next few weeks will in effect determine Sarri’s future at the club. Chelsea are still competing in three cup competitions and are only a point off the top four in the Premier League but, if their campaign unravels over the rest of this month, change would seem inevitable, whether in March or at the end of the campaign.

The forward Pedro insisted the players had grasped the tactical nuances Sarri has been impressing on them. “Press really high, stay compact, create chances with good possession, a lot of the ball,” he said. “We can do this as a team. But sometimes it’s so difficult to play in this way depending on the opponents. City played very well, so it was so difficult to press, create between the lines, and to defend.”

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The tie in Sweden is a 20,500 sell-out with the hosts, coached by the former City striker and Brentford and Leeds manager Uwe Rösler intent on an upset despite not having played a competitive game since November. Malmö have played five friendlies, including one against a local amateur team and two in Marbella during a training camp, in the build-up to this fixture having emerged from their group at Besiktas’ expense.

They have not lost a home game in European competition since PSG trounced them 5-0 in the Champions League group stage in 2015. “But the higher you climb the mountain, the thinner the air gets,” said Rosler. “It gets more difficult. The mindset is ‘no respect’. We have to be aggressive with and without the ball. We have a plan.”

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Malmö (3–5–2, possible): Dahlin; Nielsen, Bengtsson, Safari; Vindheim, Christiansen, Bachirou, Lewicki, Rieks; Rosenberg, Antonsson

Chelsea (4-3-3, possible): Arrizabalaga; Zappacosta, Christensen, Rüdiger, Emerson; Kanté, Kovacic, Barkley; Willian, Higuaín, Hazard