It’ll be interesting to see if he has a plan b now we’re without Jackson for an extended period. 
 

Directors have left him in a tricky spot, if we lose Enzo or Caicedo that’s the season done. James was also missing from the training pictures.

Edited February 12, 20251 yr by DukesOfHazard

We’ll see what he’s made of now. He’s going to have look at doing something different surely. 

1 hour ago, JM7 said:

We’ll see what he’s made of now. He’s going to have look at doing something different surely. 

Looking forward to Maresca's excuse for the next two months of bad form and him putting it down to Jackson being out......like December and January didn't happen when Jackson was fit.

this bloke talks so much sh*t

"Our goalkeeper at the moment is Filip Jorgensen,’ said Maresca, spealking at his pre-match press conference.

‘I said that the Filip solution was also to give Robert Sánchez time to recover mentally and physically but the idea is not to game by game change the keeper.’

SO WHY THE F**K DID HE PLAY HIM IN THE CUP?

9 minutes ago, POCH OUT said:

this bloke talks so much sh*t

"Our goalkeeper at the moment is Filip Jorgensen,’ said Maresca, spealking at his pre-match press conference.

‘I said that the Filip solution was also to give Robert Sánchez time to recover mentally and physically but the idea is not to game by game change the keeper.’

SO WHY THE F**K DID HE PLAY HIM IN THE CUP?

I think he's saying our number 1 is Jorgensen now in the league and Sanchez is the cup keeper? Which is funny because it'll mean Sanchez has the chance to cost us our only remaining chance at silverware this season. 

21 hours ago, Nibs said:

But no-one can say that. All very well keeping him for two years if we see a bit of progression and things are going okay with just the odd set-back. But our football of late has been some of the dullest and most turgid I can remember - and that's with an exceptional talent like Cole Palmer in the side. If the football was to carry on like that or get even worse, I wouldn't keep for one season, never mind two.

I get your points and fully agree, but unless we have a clear out of the people doing the hiring nothing is going to change.

This bloke talks so much crap why is he still here?

https://chelsea.news/2025/02/maresca-top-4-comments/

Strange how when the manager looks like he doesn't know what he's doing the team play like they don't know what they're doing. Now he starts saying dumb things to make excuses. Not a good sign for his future. Maybe top 4 is not the goal this season, but you never say that to the press. With so many problems at the club it's hard to put too much energy in hating on Maresca at the moment. Don't think he'll be around come August.

1 hour ago, POCH OUT said:

This bloke talks so much crap why is he still here?

https://chelsea.news/2025/02/maresca-top-4-comments/

First paragraph of the article:

 

Enzo Maresca annoyed Chelsea fans in the wake of the club’s exit from the Champions League by saying that it could be a “positive” because it would allow them more time to prepare for Premier League games.

When were we in the Champions League?

32 minutes ago, Scott said:

Strange how when the manager looks like he doesn't know what he's doing the team play like they don't know what they're doing. Now he starts saying dumb things to make excuses. Not a good sign for his future. Maybe top 4 is not the goal this season, but you never say that to the press. With so many problems at the club it's hard to put too much energy in hating on Maresca at the moment. Don't think he'll be around come August.

He’s been defeatist from we picked up form.

It would be different if he was saying the club weren't asking for top 4 this season, but we will do our best to make sure it happens anyway because we believe in the ability and potential of the squad. It sends across a different message than saying "I didn't say our target was top 4" and playing it down at every opportunity. First it was playing down our title chances, but playing down our top 4 chances is inexcusable. We were 2nd, we were far from perfect, but we were doing enough, then you started talking the players down and we have slumped to looking the worst we have looked since Potter.

His comments have done nothing but hurt the team. If he thinks that these players will suddenly come good in a year or two, he's in for a surprise. This group are picking up some really bad habits from losing games. We already see it on the pitch. Remember when the poor run started with that 0-0 draw against Everton? Everybody looked annoyed and frustrated at the full time whistle, like they knew they could do better. The weird thing is that Maresca handled this moment really well. He went around to every player at the full time whistle and you could see that he was telling them to not be too down on themselves. But you look at us now and the players just look accepting when we draw or lose.

Players getting used to defeat at a young age is not a good thing. These are habits a lot of players never manage to shake off. If you don't get that taste of being a winner, then how can you hope of ever becoming one in the future?

I don't see Espirito Santo downplaying Forest's chances. I remember him saying the players should enjoy it, have a beer after a win, and go again in the next game when they beat United. This is a much a better attitude to have than saying "I didn't say our target was top 4"

None of our rivals for Champions League spots are saying anything like this.

1 hour ago, El regreso said:

First paragraph of the article:

 

Enzo Maresca annoyed Chelsea fans in the wake of the club’s exit from the Champions League by saying that it could be a “positive” because it would allow them more time to prepare for Premier League games.

When were we in the Champions League?

I fail to trust any website that has an ad taking up every square inch. 

One of the fun things about the internet is that you can go back in time to see what people say.

For example, I still stand by my pre-season prediction that Maresca will win us the league. Everton have Liverpool rattled, it is only a matter of time before we win the league. Our recent form in cups makes me doubt my additional prediction that we will win the Champions League next year, but I'm hoping Maresca can work on that in the off-season.

But my favourite examples are these. Here are some popular YouTube tactical analyses from earlier in the season:

How Maresca's Principles Are Making Chelsea Dominate - Football Meta
How Maresca 'Actually' Transformed Chelsea - Tactical Football Fanatic
Enzo Maresca's NEW Monster Chelsea Tactic | Destroying Defences - RDF Tactics
How Enzo Maresca Fixed BROKEN Chelsea - Premier League (Official)

A timely reminder that no one on social media, in fact, knows anything. 

If we look into all of them (and I don't suggest you do) they all do the same thing: overly complicating simple observations, statistics with no context, relying on truisms and football cliches like "free role", "passing lanes" and "third-man runs" - I kid you not, one of these videos seems to argue that Maresca invented Chelsea players making runs off the ball - and above all else, overly focusing on attacking style as if that is the only aspect to football. All of them did not offer an explanation as to why we conceded cheap goals.

Another, simpler way to analyse our early run was is to acknowledge that we scored goals in crucial moments that changed the game state, and we scored multiple goals that lessened the effect of defensive and goalkeeping errors. While these 'moments' were in our favour earlier in the season, they are currently not with us at the moment.

OPTA conveniently ran some numbers much earlier in the season, while on our good run, showing the effect of game state. Although these numbers were run in October after 8 games, sorting the data from least time spent losing to most time spent losing correlates with the current league table.

At the end of October we had spent 22% of our time losing, compared to 3%, 5% and 9% for Liverpool, Arsenal and Notts Forest respectively. We were not conceded more or less chances while winning than any other club. We also had more or less the same xG whether we were winning, losing, or drawing, meaning our attack never really changes in a game. The difference seems to be the 'moments', and the team's mentality to respond to them. 

Perhaps when Jackson and the wingers could be relied on for goals to break the deadlock or relieve pressure, the team was able to close out games for the win and defensive issues didn't matter. Now, we don't have those options available to us and our only goalscoring options appear to be Cole Palmer and Own Goal.

Is that Maresca's fault? No, but ultimately it's his responsbility to fix. His decision to have unbridled faith in Jackson post-December has lead to poor management of Nkunku and Guiu, and his failure to try other solutions to get his best players on the pitch is now reaching a critical stage.

Can someone make sense of why Washington is still negotiating a loan move back to Santos when we have no No 9? You would think the club would have cancelled the loan move, but Maresca has stated that is still happening. Why did we pay €20m for him then?

There are lots of weird footballing decisions been made in the club that makes zero sense. We knew we needed a quality DM way before the Jan window opened, spent all Jan sending out press briefings and ended up signing a 19yr old Mathis Amougou with less than 900mins  8 Ligue 1 starts. What makes it weirder is we have Lesley Ugochukwu out on loan in Southampton. You then have the CB situation where we have 7 CBs presently in the first team. We recalled Anselmino from Boca and prevented him from going out on loan to any of Marseille or Atlanta, even after reaching an agreement with the former. He is now 7th choice CB and will waste 6months of development. Josh Acheampong should also have been loaned out to either a PL or a championship team to aid his development, but he is 6th choice when everyone is fit. 

Top 4 not a goal?? What kinda mentality is this from this club..  3 years into a rebuild and top 4 not a goal. Then he should go back managing Leicester if we he can’t deal with the pressure of a top club. 

Quite impressive watching a manager start so strongly and then just completely self combust by their own choices. 

He even had the easy way out and could have pointed fingers at the sporting directors and the fans would have stuck by him but instead he's stuck with underperforming players and played this loser "we're not good enough" mentality, when we were. 

 

The difference in ambition is staggering 

If we fail to win tonight he's going to be knee deep in sh*t with the supporters.

Got that deer in headlights look at the moment and thats never, ever a good sign.

That's what happens when you go from having Elite coaches to novice ones.

As Chelsea supporters we've seen enough managers come and go to know when a manager is realising he might not be around much longer, yesterday it seemed like he was feeling the pressure.

if we dont get CL he's gone, don't believe all that rubbish "i don't need to get CL this season", after being one game away from being top to falling out the top 5 the owners will sack him, if he really believes that then he needs to be in a straight jacket

I think he sees out the season and gets to start next season as manager, regardless of what happens from here.

Unless we hit some horrendous losing streak that looks untenable early next season he'll be given time. 

It's a lose/lose scenario for him in my opinion. 

Either he continues to manage poorly and we fail to get Champions League, thus gets sacked. 

Or he does great things and manages to cross this team over the finish line to qualify for Champions League, where then the co-sporting directors will circle jerk thinking their policy is working. 

3 hours ago, Ukraine Bolt said:

I think he sees out the season and gets to start next season as manager, regardless of what happens from here.

Unless we hit some horrendous losing streak that looks untenable early next season he'll be given time. 

I agree. His comments to the press, while confusing, are almost certainly coming directly from the owners. Of course they would welcome Champions League as it would no doubt bring in extra finances. But equally it would put them in the spotlight for supporting the manager next season with bigger name signings and they clearly want to stick with their existing strategy.