In Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick, Captain Ahab becomes consumed by his desire to hunt the white whale that once maimed him. It’s not just revenge, it’s fixation. Despite warnings from his crew, signs from nature, and even moments of self-doubt, Ahab steers his ship, the Pequod toward certain doom, convinced that catching the whale will restore something he’s lost.
“All my means are sane, my motive and my object mad.”
Ahab’s pursuit isn’t brave. It’s self-destructive. He drags his crew into peril, blinds himself to reason, and ultimately goes down with the ship, still chasing a ghost.
In many ways, Enzo Maresca’s season at Chelsea followed a similar arc. What began as a promising, balanced system — mixing control with counters as Chelsea climbed to second position on the table — eventually narrowed into a singular obsession: control and possession. Holding the ball became the goal, even when results began to sour. Even when it became clear that the system wasn’t delivering.
Like Ahab, Maresca is chasing the whale that is Guardiola’s personal brand of bore-fest. Why? Because it once maimed him.
On 29 November 2008, Enzo Maresca was Sevilla’s defensive midfielder when Pep Guardiola’s high-flying Barcelona were the visitors.
It would turn out to be a key moment in his career. A lightbulb moment of clarity, when thoughts the 28-year-old Maresca had on how the game should be played were turned on their head.
It would be more than eight years before he, as a young coach, could begin to try to put into practice what he had witnessed that night when Barca strolled to a 3-0 victory as Sevilla spent most of the game trying to figure out how to get the ball.
-Guillem Balagué; source: BBC
Thus, Maresca still chasing that annoying whale that beat his team 3-0 while he was a player. Still chasing it 17 years later. Even when it dragged Leicester into a mid-season slump during their Championship-winning season. Even when it dragged Chelsea into a mid-season slump during our Conference League-winning season. Even when the players looked stifled. Even when the points slipped away.
There are two important bits there. Leicester won something. Chelsea won something and qualified for the Champions League. Maresca is a good coach. His analysis is strong, whether it is about what a player needs (helping Enzo improve his late runs into the box) or is about in-game fixes.
But that damn whale. That will be his undoing.
Maresca’s Whale And Chelsea’s 2024–25 Season: A Tale of Three Acts
Chelsea’s Possession Rose, but Output Dropped: Mid-Season Slump Shows Higher Possession Coincided with Fewer Goals, Lower xG, and Fewer Points
A Promising Start: Fluidity and Flair
After an opening-day defeat to Manchester City, Chelsea exploded with a 6–2 win away at Wolves, powered by Noni Madueke’s hattrick of goals and Cole Palmer’s hattrick of assists, offering a glimpse of a team playing with structure, intent, and vertical threat. Maresca introduced a 3-2-5 in-possession system, drawing from his Guardiola-influenced blueprint, but adapting it to Chelsea’s unique blend of youth, pace, and positional flexibility.
What made this early phase so effective was the fusion of ideas: Maresca’s structured buildup gave Chelsea a stable platform, while the direct, transition-based instincts nurtured under Mauricio Pochettino still pulsed through the squad. The result was a team that could both control possession and strike at pace, stretching defenses with intelligent movement and sharp passing sequences.
The early season was defined by attacking freedom:
Chelsea scored 2.31 goals per match, our highest scoring rate across the campaign.
Our shot conversion rate reached 14.6%, suggesting not just volume, but clarity.
Average possession sat at 56.5%, used not to dominate for its own sake, but to bait and break through pressure.
In matches like the 5–1 win over Southampton or Palmer’s astonishing four-goal burst in 20 minutes against Brighton, Chelsea looked like a team playing with instinct and identity: not perfect, but promising.
There were still remnants of deficiencies from the Pochettino era, namely defensive fragility and inconsistent tactical discipline — 19 conceded in our first 16 games is just okay — but for the first time in years, the club seemed to have a system players could believe in, one that combined the transitional lessons of Pochettino with Maresca’s evolving vision for control.
One could certainly make an argument that Chelsea were in the title race, however unlikely. And many did.
Chelsea were 2nd in Premier League, after 16 matches, only 3 points behind Liverpool in 1st
Mid-Season Drop: Possession Obsession, Progression Regression
If the opening act of Chelsea’s season was defined by joyful verticality, the second was all about suffocating control. Somewhere between the Brighton blitz and the post-Christmas frost, Enzo Maresca doubled down on his gospel of possession and the team started to fade.
The numbers lay it bare: during this slump, Chelsea’s average possession spiked to 60.15%, the highest of any phase. But rather than establishing dominance, it exposed a dangerous tradeoff: control without incisiveness.
Gone were the aggressive ball carries and spontaneous overloads. In their place came cautious rotations, shorter sequences, and players frozen in positional obedience. The ball moved, yes, often with elegance but with diminishing purpose.
The attacking output collapsed:
Goals per match fell to just 1.23, nearly a full goal lower than the early season.
Shot conversion rate cratered to 7.8%, down from 14.6% just weeks earlier.
Progressive Carries dropped while average shot distance climbed to 17.2 yards, a sign that we were no longer breaking through, just circling outside the gates. Chelsea were taking longer to shoot, and doing it from further away.
It wasn’t just a tactical shift. It was an identity crisis.
Maresca’s Chelsea had more of the ball than ever but less to show for it. A system once brimming with transition threat was now chewing up possession for its own sake. And like Captain Ahab chasing his white whale through the mist, Maresca pressed forward, certain that if his team just believed harder, the breakthrough would come.
It didn’t. Not yet. What was the impact? Chelsea dropped to 5th position in the Premier League table; gone were the days of title challenge.
However, this doesn’t quite capture how dire things actually were. Chelsea weren’t just struggling, we were in free fall.
Between Matchday 17 and 29, the club picked up just 17 points from 13 games, slipping to 14th in the league table. Only four teams had a worse goal difference during that period, and defeats piled up. The performances weren’t just flat, they were alarming. For a team with top-four ambitions and European commitments, the slump wasn’t a blip. It was a full-blown regression.
Chelsea ranked 14th in the league form table between Matchday 17 and 29, a period defined by high possession but collapsing output and defensive frailty.
Late-Season Revival: Defensive Solidity And Strong Finish
If the first chapter of Chelsea’s season was fueled by flair, and the second by overthought control, the final stretch was something else entirely: functional. Not explosive, not poetic but, for once, effective.
Maresca didn’t tear up his philosophy, but he tempered it. Possession dropped to 53.6%, the lowest of any phase, as Chelsea found a better rhythm between control and caution. The team stopped trying to dominate for dominance’s sake and started focusing on something simpler: don’t concede, don’t collapse, and take what you’re given.
The attack remained muted:
Goals per match stayed low at 1.22
Shot conversion barely nudged up to 8.3%
Progressive carries continued to decline
But what changed, dramatically, was the composure. Errors were reduced. Shape was maintained. Individual duels were won. The games were tighter, the margins thinner, and yet the points began to add up.
This wasn’t a return to the early-season fluidity. It was a recalibrated Chelsea, one that understood our flaws. It wasn’t breathtaking. But it worked. And in a season of extremes, that counted for something.
Over the final 9 matches of the season, Maresca’s side picked up 20 points, the third-best return in the league, behind only Manchester City and Aston Villa. Chelsea went 6W–2D–1L, conceding just 6 goals, and posting a goal difference of +5. The attack still lacked the early-season punch, but the team looked compact, disciplined, and emotionally stable: qualities that had been missing during the winter collapse.
Chelsea ended the season strong, ranking 3rd in the league over the final 9 games with 20 points and just 6 goals conceded
Final Thoughts
The data clearly shows that in the middle part of the season, where Chelsea had the most amount of possession, our attacking metrics were the worst.
Chelsea’s possession soared in the mid-season slump while our carries and progressive carries declined, showing that Chelsea were playing more slowly. Another of Chelsea play being slower is the increased number of touches in middle and final third while a huge drop in goals scored, thereby, once and for all proving that more possession does not mean more goals.
Chelsea’s play had become too slow and possession focused in the mid-season period, too much Maresca-ism.
If you play too slow, while it looks great to football purists, it also allows a motivated opposition to drop back into an organized block and it becomes harder to score.
If Maresca is to do well next season, he needs to sacrifice on his principles a bit. Not too much; just a little bit. He needs to mix in the occasional quick transition, the occasional ball over the top and stop forcing the team to go backwards and sideways.
“I was just sick of getting the ball and going backwards and sideways, so I thought, when I next get the ball, I’m just gonna go, and, yeah, it worked.
“[There was] a bit of space, I was chopping and changing and I seen Enzo running, and yeah, just put it over the top. [The second one was] same, again. I seen Jackson and so I crossed.”
-Cole Palmer; source: YouTube via Reddit
Maresca has already delivered silverware, secured Champions League qualification, and earned the backing of his players, that is more than any other BlueCo manager could say before him. The foundation is there. But if he can let go of his obsession, stop chasing his white whale, he has the chance to build something special at Chelsea.
If he doesn’t, he risks becoming just another name on the long list of managers who came with a vision… and left without a legacy.
Soccer: International Friendly Soccer-Wrexham at Chelsea David Gonzales-Imagn Images