It was an interesting press conference for Enzo Maresca today, as the Chelsea boss was asked about the big picture of his time at the club.
A quarter of the way through his second season, does he think it’s going better than his first season? There are doubts about whether the team are improving as a whole, in part thanks to the constant turnover of players, and Maresca was asked to defend that.
Maresca deflects questions about Chelsea improvements
Chelsea warm up in Baku.
Chelsea warm up in Baku. (Photo by Aziz Karimov/Getty Images)
As always, Maresca basically deflected the question by saying he still wanted to go game by game:
“I said many times, I don’t like to think where we can be in April, May, June. I like to think how we can win tomorrow,” the manager said.
“This is the only target I have in my mind at this moment. Then after tomorrow, we have an international break. And then we go again. But for me, if you want to try to compete, you have to think about the next one, next one, next one. And then again, when we need the last sprint in March, April, it depends where we are, and then we decide.”
He was then asked whether his team were at the place he expected at this point of the season, a subtly different way of asking the same question:
“I think we tried to win all the games. Also, I can understand that this season, the expectation has risen around the team. Again, last year, after 11 games, I think we had 19 points. If we are able to win tomorrow, we have more points this season compared to last season.
“So, do we have consistency or not? The big difference for me, personally, from this season and last season, is the expectation around the team. Because the numbers are there and we can be even better than last season. But because the expectation has risen, it’s obviously a big difference.”
The expectations are higher, of course. How could they not be another year into a £2bn rebuild?