We hope Enzo Maresca isn’t giving Sancho and Nkunku this message in the dressing room | OneFootball

Enzo Maresca’s Chelsea team put in a pretty diabolical performance against Arsenal today and could have played for hours without scoring.

As ever, the Blues boss was reluctant to criticise his players directly, and he even pointed to the positives in the performance.

“I think we struggled a little bit at the beginning. I think the first 20 minutes, we struggled a little bit, but after that, we started to control the game and created some chances. In the second-half, the game was 50/50 and for me, the biggest difference was the set-piece strategy.”

Read the room, Enzo, we want to know that you know know that this sort of showing in a game against our rivals is not acceptable. We don’t want to hear you saying that we only lost because of a set piece.

Maresca lets two underperformers off lightly

Jadon Sancho lies as part of a wall in a defeat at Arsenal. (Photo by Julian Finney/Getty Images)

Chelsea were really poor collectively, but their wide options came in for particular criticism. We can at least remember a couple of wild shots from Pedro Neto and some tough tackles from Enzo Fernandez. Christopher Nkunku and Jadon Sancho on the other hand may as well have not played.

Of course, Enzo Maresca simply refused to criticise them. In fact, he went as far as to say they “did quite well” and couldn’t have done better. That just feels insulting to our intelligence at this stage:

“Jadon did quite well, Christo also. I didn’t have the feeling they can do something better. For sure, we can create and attack better as a team,” Maresca said.

We wonder if he’s just protecting them in public and is in fact demanding more from them behind the scenes. Or does he tell them in the dressing room this sort of dire performance is acceptable?