Our squad players are not good enough.

Resting or rotating players instantly makes us weaker.

Only the board and Maresca don't see that.

Every time we rotate we are making the chances of winning smaller.

We have players, a manager and board members who don't understand at all about rivalry, desire etc...

That's one of our biggest problems at the club.

As an example Brentford, Fulham, Palace are geographically close to us but we never take them seriously enough so we nearly always struggle against them.

So, how are we meant to convince the likes of Maresca, Enzo etc.. that Leeds Utd will be fired up for a match against Chelsea.

Maresca has undone any goodwill of the last week by disrespecting Leeds, the Premier League and worse of all us fans.

We're going nowhere with him in charge.

Edited December 3, 2025Dec 3 by 2211

I wish to God that he would be sacked, but sadly there is absolutely no chance of that happening with these owners. I’m sure he did as instructed and used as many players as possible to try and keep their value up or whatever batsh*t plan it is they have.

This is by far and away the worst time in my life to support us. Historically when we’ve been bad it’s been disappointing but not unexpected.

Now we’re absolutely dismal after chucking over a billion pounds at it in five minutes. It should be nearly impossible to be sh*t after spending that much. But by god, apart from Caicedo and Palmer, we’ve not signed anyone that would have got into 81/82 team.

Can’t beat 19th placed Leeds without Caicedo apparently.

Just now, Sconnie Blue said:

Can’t beat 19th placed Leeds without Caicedo apparently.

Never his fault, always the players

We played 4 games every 3 days, you definitely need to rotate. But it is funny how Maresca genius is completely gone when he can't play good players.

Good job today you clever bugger.

Keep telling yourself your a tactical genius and slapping yourself on the back for psg and Barca, and ignore adding Leeds to the list with Brighton, qarabag, Sunderland, Brentford and man united for the times you have embarrassed us in 3 Months.

no caicedo so it's an ideal time to change 3 of the back 4 and start to not match fit Badiashile with the incompetent tosin, and play trev at right back.

A proper fool who once again disrespected the league and our fans.

Leeds is a blood feed in our history and that's what you do?

1 hour ago, axman2526 said:

Good job today you clever bugger.

Keep telling yourself your a tactical genius and slapping yourself on the back for psg and Barca, and ignore adding Leeds to the list with Brighton, qarabag, Sunderland, Brentford and man united for the times you have embarrassed us in 3 Months.

no caicedo so it's an ideal time to change 3 of the back 4 and start to not match fit Badiashile with the incompetent tosin, and play trev at right back.

A proper fool who once again disrespected the league and our fans.

Leeds is a blood feed in our history and that's what you do?

But if he rotate vs Arse then fans will think that his tactic vs arse is stupid.

8 minutes ago, Bob stark said:

But if he rotate vs Arse then fans will think that his tactic vs arse is stupid.

Acheampong in for Fofana.

Garnacho in for Neto.

Santos in for Caicedo.

Delap in for James.

Just one change to the back 4 and nobody would be having a go at marrsca for his rotations in this game.

Instead he Playa that lump tosin and puts our a back 4 most of us called would be a disaster.

37 minutes ago, axman2526 said:

Acheampong in for Fofana.

Garnacho in for Neto.

Santos in for Caicedo.

Delap in for James.

Just one change to the back 4 and nobody would be having a go at marrsca for his rotations in this game.

Instead he Playa that lump tosin and puts our a back 4 most of us called would be a disaster.

Gusto played two straight games and in the last two seasons he has many small injuries.

I don't know the last time acheampong got real minutes.

The players were woeful tonight, but I put this one on Maresca. Same for Brentford, where we only played for 45 mins, or Utd, Brighton, Sunderland. We were even crap against Palace and got away with that.

He throws in the odd good result every now and again, but Maresca doesn't seem to understand what momentum is or how to prepare a side for difficult moments/games. Our lack of intensity makes us so easy to play against, and the rotation kills all rhythm. Arsenal barely rotated and have played the same volume of games, but its too much for our little petals.

The inconsistency is killing us. Not just inconsistency in results, but its the manner of our performances, level of effort, and mistakes. Its been this way for so long and is not showing any real signs of changing.

Edited December 4, 2025Dec 4 by PhilH930

7 hours ago, 2211 said:

Our squad players are not good enough.

Resting or rotating players instantly makes us weaker.

Only the board and Maresca don't see that.

Nope, they completely understand this

I cant believe he roped me in again to believing he was a 'process' manager that is on his way to becoming world class.

Forget the style of play and intensity. He had us in a muddle with that awful team selection. Arsenal played their two second choice cbs for the 2nd game in a row. Once again, Maresca completely changes it. Tosin and Badiashile haven't seen regular game time and I cant even remember when they last started but he throws in both of them with Trev at RB. Why the hell can't Gusto start at rb? Im going back to not caring anymore. If we are on tv, I might not even watch.

5 hours ago, Bob stark said:

Gusto played two straight games and in the last two seasons he has many small injuries.

I don't know the last time acheampong got real minutes.

This is what I cannot get my head around. Just what has the lad done wrong FFS?

He played earlier in the season and looked very decent. Raw, but decent. Was MOTM in one game. Yet we've hardly seen him since. Instead, Maresca is happy to select the likes of Badiashile and Tosin who we all know, f**k up on a regular basis. It's inexcusable. As soon as I saw those two clowns in the starting line-up last night I feared the worst, as I'm sure many CFC supporters did and the outcome was just all too predictable. So f**king angry but at the same time, resigned to the fact that this is life under Maresca.

Theres literally no reason for him to do that last night, leave Trev where he was, bring in gusto at RB, Acheampong at CB if he wanted to rest Fofana. Instead he makes the worst decisions imaginable and it completely backfires, as expected.

I honestly think he loves the smell of his own sh*t, thinks hes some kind of amazing deep footballer thinker and is constantly trying to prove "me big brain" by doing strange things to amaze and astound us. Basically hes a sh*t football version of David Blaine.

1 minute ago, dkw said:

Theres literally no reason for him to do that last night, leave Trev where he was, bring in gusto at RB, Acheampong at CB if he wanted to rest Fofana. Instead he makes the worst decisions imaginable and it completely backfires, as expected.

I honestly think he loves the smell of his own sh*t, thinks hes some kind of amazing deep footballer thinker and is constantly trying to prove "me big brain" by doing strange things to amaze and astound us. Basically hes a sh*t football version of David Blaine.

Absolutely criminal and bizarre sticking our best available cb at rb and two bozos at cb.

Had a good night sleep and still fuming at this bald twat. How on earth did he pick that line up? Is he thick as mince? You want to rotate the defence? Because he didn't rotate Chalobah or Cucu, and he had to bring on Gusto. I understand he needs to rest Fofana as a precaution, what about playing

Gusto Acheampong Chalobah Cucurella

Instead he plays Badiashille and Tosin, moving Chalobah to right back. Absolutely genius... idiot.

Acheampong could even have played right back. Has a lot of experience of that position in youth football.

Bizarre from Maresca and the club ...

We seem to have two or three teams under Maresca.

The top grade all conquering but fragile 11 who can more often than not beat almost anyone.

The partial rotate crew who more than often get us over the line, just.

The full rotate crew who give us what we got last night.

The squad in full rotate mode isnt consistently good enough for Premier league football and it has to be questioned as to whether in partial rotate mode its much better.

We havent got a decent enough player to fulfil the striker role in JPedro Delap Guiu George or Jackson for the Premier League. We should consider playing without one until that changes.

The squad needs some changes in January a few in and a few out. Fringe squad players are of no use to us and need swapping out. It doesnt matter if they were expensive or if they need more time (Strasbourg is the place for that).

Edited December 4, 2025Dec 4 by OTL

2 minutes ago, Sexyfootball said:

Acheampong could even have played right back. Has a lot of experience of that position in youth football.

Bizarre from Maresca and the club ...

Yes, but if he plays at RB, he is going to play Tosin or Badiashille as CBs, and that's not very safe. Play Chalobah-Achampong as CBs. Gusto doesn't need a rest, just like Cucu. And if Gusto needs rotation, play Josh as RB next game at Bournemouth and bring on Fofana as CB. We've got plenty of players to rotate one position at a time, no need to change the whole defensive line and even less to play Badiashille and Tosin.

His rotation policy of changing several players each game is utterly moronic, totally disastrous.

Have a core team, swap 2 or 3 players at most, then you build consistency and an understanding.

If he must rotate then just change one in defence, one in midfield, maybe one in attack every other game.

rest a player one game, bring him back in rest a different player a few games later, thats all thats needed, its massively over the top the way hes doing it.

2 minutes ago, dkw said:

His rotation policy of changing several players each game is utterly moronic, totally disastrous.

Have a core team, swap 2 or 3 players at most, then you build consistency and an understanding.

If he must rotate then just change one in defence, one in midfield, maybe one in attack every other game.

rest a player one game, bring him back in rest a different player a few games later, thats all thats needed, its massively over the top the way hes doing it.

It's obvious from his season and a half at Chelsea, that he doesn't grasp the concept of not changing the whole team to rest players.

This is the premier league you don’t rotate that much between games it’s totally stupid. Arteta only made ONE change to his back 4 that played against us just ONE. This clown thinks he can completely rearrange the back 4 and everything continues what a clown 🤡

I’m still fuming this morning.

I can hardly bring myself to look at the League Table.

It’s virtually self sabotage, because I honestly can’t see how he would think those amount of changes and with the personal of these changes could even bring 3 points to us.

He’s hasn’t got a winners mentality for a club like us, he acts like he’s still at Leicester where one good result a month is enough to dine out on.

As for the need of rotation, as pointed out by numerous posts there was much better ways to rotate last night.

We have 8 matches in December and with this guy in charge and his stupid rotations every other match we immediately will put at least 4 matches in serious jeopardy - and we still have 7 matches to go!

Any hopes or optimism of a possible title challenge will be shattered by the start of January 2026.

And it will be directly because of Maresca and his love of playing weakened teams on rotation.

I wonder what his thought process was for last nights game. Did he understand the rivalry between the two clubs, how difficult a match would be there under the lights? The need for strong characters willing to put a shift in especially in the opening 20 minutes. Instead he puts a powderpuff side out lacking backbone, completely over rotated. The result unfortunately, like a lot of us foreseen was inevitable.

I'm sure that many players knew and thought the same as us, that Maresca was getting it horribly wrong. And I'm sure that some like Acheampong will be doubting the manager skills. What would James think, as a captain, of the lineup and preparation for the game?