Maresca messed up against United, but his Chelsea record shows he's a top coach
The idea he's a rubbish coach or should be sacked is laughable
This week has been a rude wake up call for everyone involved in Chelsea Football Club. Two defeats, both essentially down to self sabotage and ridiculous errors, as well as two abysmal first half performances, have snuffed out a lot of the optimism garnered from the end of last season and two trophy wins.
Enzo Maresca, the head coach, wasn’t to blame for the Bayern defeat in my view. That was individual errors outside his control. But he had a big hand in the defeat to Man Utd.
Make no mistake, not beating a poor United team is embarrassing, playing as we did, and the substitutions too, were all shocking. Robert Sanchez was a big part of the United defeat too, getting himself sent off stupidly. This was followed of course by the awful subs by Maresca.
Maresca definitely deserves a lot of criticism for these subs and the United defeat. He messed up, simple as that. He panicked under pressure and made some poor decisions, there’s no sugarcoating it. He needs to get his head together and get things sorted, he needs to up his game and smartish. And he needs to start trusting the likes of Josh Acheampong, Andrey Santos and Jarrol Hato, maybe even switch things up tactically. Josh was MOTM v Crystal Palace on opening day, one of our better defensive performances this season, so for him not to be in the squad v United was nonsensical.
To my mind, Maresca’s relative inexperience is showing again, but he’s got the ability to learn and make the right changes, as he has before.
But of course this is Chelsea, and our fans are still addicted to the hire and fire cycle. So suddenly two defeats and the same voices who’ve been silent for ages now peep up saying the project is failing (factually wrong, in my mind), that Enzo isn’t a good coach, he’s been found out, just a yes man, and all the usual stuff.
People are entitled to their views, but respectfully, I believe all of that is utter nonsense.
The whole idea that he's suddenly an awful coach, or been found out, or should be sacked immediately, is, respectfully, absolutely crazy to me.
We obviously don’t know what goes on behind the scenes and maybe things are not well there. But the fact is we have only lost 5 games in our last 30, and won 22 of them, a win percentage of 73%.
He’s also won us two trophies and given tactical masterclasses against PSG, Real Betis, Liverpool and Benfica. We’ve only lost 3 of our last 17 league games, and have 34 points - 2 points per game - in that time, which replicated over a 38 game league season would see us get 78 points, enough to finish 2nd last season.
He’s tactically outsmarted the likes of Luis Enrique, Arne Slot and Manuel Pelligrini, three absolute top coaches. He’s won two finals with a young team who’d never won a trophy together. We’re also joint 4th in the PL form table for the calendar year 2025. Between end of February and the end of last season we were the best team in the PL on form - and that without Cole Palmer in form.
And yet people think Maresca a bad coach, has been found out and needs to go, based on two defeats and a few poor performances ? I’m sorry but its utter nonsense and I’m not buying it for a second. It doesn’t remotely align with his record in terms of results, win percentage or trophies/achievements.
His overall Chelsea record:
Games: 67
Wins: 43
Draws: 10
Losses:14
Win percentage (all comps): 64%
PL win percentage: 51.1%
Points per game: 1.79 (68 points in a 38 game season)
I get fans being angry about the performances and the criticism of Maresca in the United game in particular is completely valid. I’m angry with Maresca about the United game too and he deserves criticism for it. But it shouldn’t go further than that right now.
Bottom line, we’ve had a bad week and Maresca and the squad need to up their game sharpish. But we’ve not suddenly become a bad side or a bad squad. I maintain this is a better squad than last season. We have better options in attack, more depth in midfield and full back.
The club failed to sign a GK and CB last summer, which Maresca wanted. Not getting Mike Maignan from Milan over the matter of £4m was a complete failure by the Sporting Directors. There’s deserved criticism there, the deal was there to do and we messed it up. There’s no excuses for that.
At CB, we couldn’t predict Real coming in for Dean Huijsen and by the end of the summer we needed to sell to buy under the UEFA restrictions, which was very difficult to do. We had Wes Fofana and Benoit Badiashile, the two we were open to selling most, both injured during the window and no takers. Fortunately we still have the January window to address at least one of these issues and get one of our CBs out. Indeed we could also add Emanuel Emegha in January up front, maybe with Marc Guiu going out on loan again.
The other issue which IS an issue and I pointed out months ago on Twitter, is our season finished mid July. We played over 60 games, plus international duty and the player had little time off and a short pre-season. With the best will in the world, there’s no way we were going to start the season at our sharpest. That’s not an excuse, we’ve seen with Man City the same issue. Indeed Enzo himself may be suffering a little burnout too. Pep Guardiola has adapted to get results, and Maresca now needs to do the same. And as I said before, he needs to trust a few of the new players like Andrey Santos, and players already here, like Josh Acheampong, who didn’t play as much last season.
The bottom line is we need to win again and fast. We have a cup game against Lincoln on Tuesday and there’s no excuse not to win that comfortably. Then we have Brighton at home and absolutely have to win that game. Maresca needs to be bold and start Josh Acheampong at CCB, we have nothing to lose with him doing that.
Ezno Fernandez probably needs a rest, so starting Andrey Santos, who performed well against Man Utd and is relatively fresh, ahead of him next week might be useful. And its high time Alejandro Garnacho started a game too. If Romeo Lavia is fit for Brighton, I might even start him and Andrey more advanced, and rest Cole Palmer.
Enzo Maresca has shown he has the ability to become a top coach, who overall has done well at Chelsea. But he’s messed up and made some bad decisions recently, for which he deserves criticism. Any coach can lose a few games, but he now needs to change things up, raise his level again, and get Chelsea back in form and winning.
I believe he’s proven well capable of doing that. Chopping and changing managers doesn’t deliver long term major success, we’d be absolute idiots to get rid of Enzo Maresca. We have to back him to turn this around, as he did last season.
There’s still 7 CL group games and 33 PL games to go, plenty of time to turn it around and have a great season. And judging Maresca’s ability on selective poor results (which there have been very few of since March), out of context, makes no sense anyway. So lets get behind him and the team to turn this around.
The Score
Enzo Maresca's win percentage is 61.43% (43/70).
Carlo Ancelotti's win percentage is 61.47% (67/109).
Tuchel's win percentage is 60.0% (60/100).
Carlo Ancelotti is rightly highly regarded amongst Chelsea fans for what he did in his 2 seasons with us. His squad was also better, and a lot more experienced. I would add that the PL was also easier in 2009/10.
Posting similar win percentages as Don Carlo, and Sarri, (and bettering TT and 2nd Mourinho) is not an easy feat. He has the 6th best win percentage off all Chelsea managers with over 30 games. (Wilkins, Holland, Hiddink, William Lewis all above EM but only up to 27 games).
So yes, people can argue that he is not the right fit for Chelsea. People can argue that they want him sacked for whatever reason. People can argue that he isn't "Elite". But I agree that people can't say that he is not a 'good manager'.
Spot on - we are going thru a little slump - they happen to the best most seasons, better to have it now that Xmas or April/May.
Totally agree on us playing Santos/Acheampong more often. Pity he had the flu vs Lincoln he would surely have played the full game. We were very poor in the first half with an admittedly very changed starting 11.
Enzo should have come off form Reggie or Ollie a lot earlier.
Enzo has had a very good start to his Chelsea carrier, and should be back now. I think the FFP issues with UEFA stopped a few deals the SDs would like to have done, but hopefully we can ship out the last few items of dead wood and replace them (if needed) in Jan.
I would like to see us use the youth a little more often in the EFL Cup and lesser FA cup games, and plenty of min in the league if we get a game put to bed early.