Chelsea: Enzo Maresca's calls for patience may fall on deaf ears with season at critical juncture | OneFootball

Blues boss needs to turn club’s poor form around in middle of an injury crisis

Not for the first time this season, Enzo Maresca chose a moment to distance his Chelsea team from those that have come before.

The Carabao Cup had been given up in similarly tame fashion at Newcastle in October, also in the fourth round, and Maresca’s approach to the domestic cups has been perceived by some fans as a little defeatist, unbecoming of a club that, in the Roman Abramovich era, lifted those trophies a combined eight times and reached another seven finals.

“They are 100 per cent fair and 100 per cent correct,” Maresca said of supporters’ frustrations. “I grew up watching Chelsea winning games and competitions but this Chelsea is not the same as that one. We are not ready to compete in four competitions in one season at the moment.

Nicolas Jackson suffered a hamstring injury against West Ham

Action Images via Reuters

“When fans have seen their club win titles, titles, titles, it is normal they can react in this way. Our goal, our duty is to bring this club to win or compete in four competitions. But at this moment we are not ready.

“There are clubs that have been together for three, four, five years but they still struggle. Why should Chelsea, after six months, be winning the Premier League, finishing in the top four or winning four competitions. Why?”

There were echoes of Maresca’s repeated insistence through the first half of the season that this was not a team ready to emulate Chelsea’s great title-winning sides, only with one key difference.

If the manager’s words then were putting space between his team and the best Chelsea teams of recent times, then their performances were at least doing likewise with some of the worst. Not yet title contenders, no, but results told you this was a team making progress, one much improved on those that muddled to 12th and then sixth in the previous campaigns. Now, you cannot be quite so sure.

Going into tonight’s game, Chelsea sit fourth, but if they repeat last weekend’s display could easily slip to sixth by tea tomorrow. With just three wins in their past ten across all competitions, Maresca’s side find themselves at a pivotal juncture in their season, needing to arrest a slump while facing the most significant injury crisis of the Italian’s reign.

Nicolas Jackson and Marc Guiu are out until after the international break next month, leaving Maresca without what he considers a recognised No9 (Christopher Nkunku’s rebranding as a specialist attacking midfielder has come at a peculiar time). Romeo Lavia will not be back to boost a flagging midfield until then either, nor perhaps Wesley Fofana to do likewise to a leaky defence. Cole Palmer looks in need of a rest, but the situation is too urgent for that.

Cole Palmer’s form has dipped and he looks in need of a rest

Getty Images

Chelsea are hardly alone in their predicament, though interestingly Maresca declined yesterday to move with the masses in blaming an overloaded calendar for his team’s fitness woes, instead pointing out how many of his absentees are coming off major injuries earlier in their young careers. (Perhaps not the greatest appraisal of the club’s recruitment).

Get those players back next month, Maresca says, and his team will carry fresh momentum into the run-in, hopefully still with a Conference League title and Champions League qualification still on the line. There are five league games and two in Europe to go, though, before the international break intervenes and the cavalry is forecast to arrive.

Fail to pick up in the short-term, and those pleas for big-picture patience may fall on deaf ears.