Enzo Maresca has got Chelsea going backwards and that’s apparently what he wants, but the fans hate it and it looks like Cole Palmer does too.
Consecutive Premier League victories over relegation fodder in Southampton and Leicester have failed to curb a burgeoning distaste for Enzo Maresca and his football among Chelsea fans, who have watched their early-season identity as a dynamic, counter-attacking team and one of the league’s great entertainers overtaken by possession-based control as their risk-averse manager’s philosophy has started to take hold.
“[Enzo} Fernandez knows that if he doesn’t play back, I will change him,” Maresca said at his press conference in response to jeers from the Stamford Bridge crowd when the midfielder passed the ball backwards despite clear options ahead of him in the unconvincing 1-0 win over Leicester.
While fans were enthralled by the punch-for-punch pre-Christmas approach that led to premature talk of a title challenge, Maresca wasn’t. After the 6-2 win over Wolves he bemoaned his side’s lack of “control”. After the 4-2 win over Brighton he laboured over how “open” Chelsea were.
Maresca wasn’t just tempering expectations as Chelsea made their surprise way into second place in the Premier League, mocking suggestions his side were in a title race; he was also warning fans that his ideal Chelsea would look a whole lot different.
Those watching Leicester last season gave fair warning. Frustration at Chelsea hiring the manager that had just led them to the Championship title was conspicuous by its absence. The same poaching of Kieran McKenna from fellow Premier League newbies Ipswich would have been met with Tractor Boys anger, but after one season of Maresca, Leicester fans had got their fill, with victories and success proving to be no substitution for entertainment.
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The change at Stamford Bridge is particularly galling as it’s not just Chelsea’s performances but also the results that have suffered. Having won 33 points from their opening 16 games of the season, the last 12 have yielded just 15. The football Maresca wants Chelsea to play has made them worse.
He will argue – in a less extreme version of the ‘short-term pain, long-term gain’ drum Ruben Amorim has been banging at Manchester United – that he’s setting Chelsea up to “dominate English football” by sticking to his methods.
But the philosophy is far more difficult to swallow when in reality Chelsea fans enjoyed short-term gain when they weren’t playing Maresca’s football in the first half of the season and are now enduring pain as his slow and predictable ethos has become entrenched.
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Chelsea had an average xG of 2.13 in those first 16 games, more than the 1.96 under Mauricio Pochettino last season, but that’s come down to 1.86 across the last 12. Maresca would presumably see that as a worthwhile sacrifice that’s resulted in the xG conceded drop from 1.47 to 1.32, but ask any football fan anywhere if they would rather see their side win 2.13-1.47 or 1.86-1.32 and they’ll think you’ve gone mad before giving the same answer. We suspect Cole Palmer would too.
Having revelled in the space afforded to him in those more chaotic games, he’s got neither a goal nor an assist in his last nine appearances. He’s admittedly missed a number of chances he would have put away in the first half of the season, but Palmer’s also been neutered by the increased control in Chelsea’s football, with opposition teams granted the opportunity to double up on him through the time they’re allowed to get back into their defensive shape.
We can’t remember the last time we saw Palmer take the ball on the half-turn in midfield and start a break, which was what defined Chelsea before Christmas. He’s now invariably faced with two banks of four and teammates ambling into position to receive the latest aimless ten-yard pass. He looks as frustrated as we are watching him.
There have been suggestions that Palmer will look to push for the exit if Chelsea fail to qualify for the Champions League, and he clearly should be playing at the highest level, but the clash of styles is surely also a consideration for a footballer who plays with such joy and freedom when given the platform to do so.
Maresca has proved himself to be tactically versatile in some ways, changing the shape of his midfield and the use of his full-backs frequently, with Marc Cucurella’s more advanced position against Leicester proving to be a winning turn. But it’s all within a rigid system in which control comes at the cost of fluency and imagination.
The Chelsea fans are sick of it and the resentment appears to be mutual, with Maresca hinting at the lack of support in an Instagram post and waving his hands around in a bid to boost the atmosphere after Cucurella’s goal against the Foxes. His concerns are valid – Stamford Bridge feels very flat a lot of the time – but the fans will claim the egg needs to come before the chicken.
The relationship isn’t yet at breaking point, but with Arsenal and Tottenham next up after the second leg against Copenhagen ahead of more tough games than most in the race for Champions League football, the knee-jerk #MarescaOut social media posts will soon be seen in the stadium without improved performances or at least decent results to keep those frustrations at bay.