Chelsea: Enzo Maresca will be glad to see the back of another difficult window at Stamford Bridge | OneFootball

Blues form has dropped as transfer speculation has ramped up and Maresca admits ‘feeling of relief’

A pair of pre-match Chelsea press conferences and almost identical questions asked to Enzo Maresca six months apart, as to whether he might feel some sense of relief once the transfer window has closed.

The circumstances are a little different. This window has been nothing like as chaotic as the summer’s, when players were coming through Cobham’s revolving door in both directions. Heading into deadline day, the traffic this month had been almost exclusively one way.

Chelsea have managed just one Premier League win in seven matches since mid-December

Action Images via Reuters

And yet that feeling of relief may if anything be even greater this time around.

Speaking ahead of Monday’s deadline day clash with West Ham, Maresca admitted that the level of speculation around so many of his players this month has played a part in their dramatic decline in league form.

“100 per cent,” he said, when asked whether background noise has affected his squad. “Not only us but all the teams. In the end, they are human beings. Even if they say: ‘No, I am professional, I am focused’, if they are talking to other clubs then they are probably not focused 100 per cent.”

Perhaps that is a convenient excuse, one which Maresca will use to mark the window’s closure as a chance to reset and refocus Chelsea’s campaign.

But it may not be coincidence that a run of just one league win in seven began in mid-December, just as transfer talk - in the press but, more importantly, between clubs and agents - ramped up.

Certainly, few of Maresca’s fringe players - those about whom there has been most exit chatter - have stepped up as first-team regulars like Nicolas Jackson, Moises Caicedo and Levi Colwill dipped below form for the first time all season. When Chelsea needed centre-back cover for the injured Wesley Fofana, despite having numerous options, it took Trevor Chalobah’s recall to eventually plug the hole.

If Tuesday will bring a fresh clarity for the rest of the season ahead then first Chelsea must negotiate the complexities of playing a London derby while the window comes to a close.

None of Maresca’s likely starters are in line to depart but still planning for the fixture cannot have been straightforward, with doubts over the weekend about whether the likes of Axel Disasi, Christopher Nkunku and Joao Felix would still be around to make the bench.

“Probably not,” Maresca said, when asked whether the Premier League should even schedule games on deadline day. Monday’s opponents are probably of the same mind; West Ham have played on deadline day’s evening three times in the last four.