Athletic: Maresca in “dangerous” situation which echoes Graham Potter collapse | OneFootball

Simon Johnson’s piece from the Athletic this weekend about Chelsea’s season has an ominous warning for manager Enzo Maresca, who Johnson warns is “in a dangerous moment”

The Brighton parallels at the moment are so strong. As Jamie Carragher pointed out in commentary for the game, the pain of losing to them is magnified because we’ve spent the best part of £250m on their staff and players in recent years.

The fact we did that only for them to beat us comfortable, twice in a week, is just embarrassing. The fact that our owners are actively trying to turn is into Brighton just makes things more painful.

But there’s more to it than that. Johnson looks back at a game in October 2022 as a turning point for Graham Potter – the manager we had poached from the Seagulls just a month before. The Blues were blasted 4-1 in that game, but at least managed 7 shots on target (they managed 0 on Saturday).

From that point, Potter’s team were in a negative spiral they could never get out of.

They lost 10 of their next 21 games and won just 6 of them. He was sacked in the spring.

Chelsea at risk of negative spiral again

Enzo Maresca looks concerned after a defeat. (Photo by Michael Regan/Getty Images)

Johnson stops short of saying Maresca’s job is at risk – for one thing, he built up a much better cushion in terms of results before this stumble began. But it’s true that the Italian coach is proving to be equally incapable of turning a bad run around.

Chelsea have not won away in the league since the 8th of December, and have 9 points from their last 9 games. More worryingly, the further they fall, the worse they seem to get. They played pretty well until conceding on Saturday, then pretty much gave up on getting a result.

Are they now going to give up on this season too?