Modern football is here to stay, we just need to have patience
Booing or groaning this soon is counter-productive
I’ll be honest, I’ve seen our fanbase divided for a long long time. But I’ve never seen it this negative and cynical before. It's everywhere. Some friends, some very smart people, long time fans, matchgoing fans, seem to all be so negative about Chelsea.
I mean Chelsea won 2-0 against Serviette, a professional performance where we scored a couple of goals, kept a clean sheet and won against a team whose season started a few weeks ago, so were a little sharper.
But you’d have thought we lost judging by some of the reaction.
Now as I wrote previously, I get we’re all emotionally and mentally exhausted as fans from the last two and a half years. I am too.
But this seems like more than that. To me, some of it is flat out toxic negativity. I’m all for constructive fair criticism, I’m totally in favour of healthy, reasoned, skepticism. Those are needed for healthy debate and discussion, and we’re ALL entitled to our views, whatever they are.
I absolutely get the fans’ anger at the ownership and sporting directors. There’s plenty of justification for that, and people are totally free to express it. But direct it at them, no one else.
Don’t take it out on the players, who’ve done nothing wrong and are in the main young and still developing, or a head coach who’s been in post 7 weeks.
It just seems to me that some fans have already decided they don’t want this style of football, its not going to work, and are going to complain, moan, groan, and keep cheering for players who’ve left the club, until this manager and this style is gone. I’ve seen this before, with Maurizio Sarri - indeed I was one who ended up wanting him gone, though my reasons weren’t to do with the style of play, more his potential ignorance of academy talent. It's like some of our fans have decided Chelsea can only play one way, and anything new and different isn’t allowed, or they don’t have the patience for. Which seems a bit unfair and narrow minded to me.
I’ll be honest, head coach Enzo Maresca’s football isn’t my preferred style of football. My favourite modern style is that of Jurgen Klopp, the gegenpressing style. Its quick, high intensity, high energy, attacking and sees a lot of goals scored. Its full of passion and emotion. I think that would work really well at Chelsea. That said, I’m willing to get behind Maresca’s philosophy as on a wider scale its been so successful in recent years, in terms of trophies, both under him and other coaches who coach a similar style at various clubs. Above all, the club have committed to it, which is rare for Chelsea under any ownership. So I’m gonna wholeheartedly commit to it and back the team and the head coach.
It’s an ongoing mystery to me as why so many of our fans are so fiercely, aggressively negative in response to any new or modern (“new fangled” is often used as derogitory term to describe anything new), style of play. It’s not like we’ve played the same way for our entire history. We tried this football under Glenn Hoddle and it ended up being successful, laying the groundwork for Ruud Gullit’s sexy football. Football is always changing and evolving. Real Madrid apart, almost all the teams who compete for the major trophies now, all play a style of football at least partially inspired by Pep Guardiola. Leverkusen under Alonso (who played for Pep), Arsenal under Arteta, Bayern Munich as well, their last 3 coaches being people who’ve been inspired by Pep Guardiola. Barcelona won La Liga in 22/23 under Xabi, playing this kind of football. Leicester won the Championship under our current head coach Enzo Maresca playing this way, as did Burnley under Vincent Kompany.
Other top PL clubs have implemented this style of play successfully, Arsenal with a less experienced coach than Enzo Maresca. It took time, but ultimately it clicked and was successful. Even the great Pep Guardiola took a season of relative struggle at City, only just making top 4 on the last day of the season and winning nothing, being labelled “Fraudiola”, before his football worked. But when it did it was incredible and City got 100 points and we’ve all seen how they’ve done since. I see no reason why it shouldn’t eventually work here, provided our fans can have a bit of patience to see it bear fruit.
The pace of play will be slow at first as players learn the structure and system, and some players will adapt to it more quickly than others, that’s expected. Eventually though it becomes second nature and players become more confident playing it - especially talented players like we have - which is when you start to see the slick football, and the pace and intensity increase, along with the goals.
Now some fans will say “why should we be like everyone else?”, which to me is a non-argument. Being different for the sake of it is petty. One way or another we need to move to a more modern type of football as a club. Thomas Tuchel managed to do that for us, with a more possession based technical style, and win at the same time. His style was a fusion between Pep’s style and Klopp’s, in my view, and slightly more pragmatic. But it was modern, technical, tactical football nonetheless.
Somehow fans had more patience for him, probably because he got more instant results and won trophies quickly, but ultimately it was possession heavy, technical football, and it worked at Chelsea.
The other big point is, this style of play some of our fans seem to hate, has won 6 of the last 7 PL titles and might win another this year. It won the treble in 2023. This isn’t some fancy new football which doesn’t deliver trophies, it absolutely delivers trophies, all of them. It’s dominating the Premier League right now.
It just takes time to implement, and Mikel Arteta has proven you don’t need to be Pep Guardiola or an experienced head coach to implement it, you just need time and the right coach.
Chelsea fans have often associated good football with nice guys like Maurcio Sarri and Graham Potter who can’t win trophies, are polite, soft and aren’t ruthless enough. But Enzo Maresca doesn’t fit this profile. He isn’t a nice, polite, soft guy. His press conference for the Serviette game earlier this week and his ruthlessness with players clearly demonstrates this.
It’s important to remember, Maresca has been in an elite, high performance winning environment under Pep Guardiola (who was equally ruthless with players he didn’t want). Pep is very selective about who he selects as his assistants. He doesn’t suffer fools, you’ve got to be elite at your job to be allowed into his circle and allowed to give him coaching and tactical advice, and Enzo was given that opportunity. He helped him win the treble as an assistant, some of the tactics he uses were used by City that season. He was respected by Pep and the City players, which again, isn’t easy to achieve - they’re all elite, proven winners.
As a head coach, he’s won the Championship and PL2. He’s in football to win, not come second, but he wants to do it his way. Tactically we’ve seen he’s flexible, he’s already used two tactical setups in two games. Philosophically it's always the same style of football, but tactically it's different - this is more Pep than Sarri, who we all know had no tactical variation at all.
Enzo’s pre-match press conference for the Servette game genuinely reminded me of Jose Mourinho, in the way he took on the press, the bluntness and honesty of his answers, with no nonsense whatsoever. It was straight from the Chelsea managerial playbook.
It was almost like he’d paid attention to what Chelsea fans want in a manager and was playing that role. He’d decided to be the bad guy, as a friend of mine put it. It would have been easy to give a nice media friendly answer to the question, be polite, toe the line and dismiss the questions, but he took them on and was blunt and ruthless about it. I liked it. He showed me then, he’s a fighter, he’s not here to be nice or a yes man, he’s here to win, his way.
If I have gripes with the owners and sporting directors, I’m going to direct it at them. The players and head coach, in my view, deserve our support and belief. The players are still young and not in their prime, and the decisions many fans disagree with are nothing to do with them. So let's back them and cheer them on, because not doing so will only undermine the team, and surely all Chelsea fans don’t want their own team undermined, we want Chelsea to win.
If the football style works, we’ll all be grateful, and if it doesn’t, ultimately Maresca will be sacked. Ulitmately though, Chelsea DO have to move to a more modern style of football, tactics and coaching if we want to be title and CL winners again, that’s just a reality.
It’s only 2 games in to this era, its impossible to make judgements on Maresca and his style as yet. The team needs our support, lets give it to them instead of directing any anger or frustration regarding the ownership or sporting directors towards the players or the head coach.
The Score
I agree with the point that it's only been two games so it's too early to tell, but that means my early opinions are more open to change - but it doesn't mean I don't have them. On Maresca himself: I think there's a couple of ways of looking at his press conference, in particular what he said about Sterling. So: definitely blunt and direct - but a technical decision? Is there anyone who believes that? When he then selects Mudryk? That seems more like someone happy to front up the party line (and is good at it, throwing out chum in the way he says it to keep the journos happy). Very Pep, actually. As a tactician I behave concerns that the club seems to think there is something magical about slow possession football that equates to continued success. Pep - and even Arteta - have seen sides improve when they've added better talent. Kompany will probably do alright in Munich because he's got better talent. It's a player's game. What's important is that there is clarity for the players (hello, Graham Potter) but there also needs to be an appreciation that players have to have the freedom to play the game as they see it in the attacking third. I do have a significant concern that Palmer will be somewhat neutralised by Maresca - as may have happened to Hazard under Sarri (if he didn't go on to simply ignore his instructions). I also worry that this Pep-lite style has had, or will soo have had, it's day and there's a cyclical shift back to more player freedom and power over patient possession - and we've caught the zeitgeist at the moment it wanes. But more than anything I worry that the club going all in one a style of football is yet another example of them thinking they are cleverer than everyone else - and we can see how that's worked out so far.
A great article once again from you The Score. One 100% agree and support. I have been accused as being too positive but my argument always has been that irrespective of what we think about the owners and SD we must get behind the coach and team and support them and be patient as well. Sitting in the stadium for both the first two home games I heard people moaning within 10 minutes. It’s totally unrealistic to expect everything to drop it and be perfect in one season let alone one game for the reasons you have explained.
Added to that it’s not as if we haven’t had pragmatic managers/coaches in the past. I remember pundits being very negative at the beginning at marino’s style of play. Again there was negative messaging when Conte took over yet both of them won the Premier League for us. The only winning manager of the Premier League we had to date that they love from the outset seems to have been Ancelotti.
The most important aspect of the development of this team is that we are all patient with them over the course of this season as a minimum. Mistakes will continue to be made until they fully understand the role of the team and the individual place within it. Unfortunately, without wanting to upset anyone there are many supporters that have only seen us win over the last 20 years and do not realise that this is an exception to the rule and not the norm. Thank you once again for your time and for submitting this excellent article and I hope it will be appreciated by the majority of the readers of this site.