Enzo Maresca isn't the reason we might not make Champions League. The culprits are above him.

The Head Coach is getting scapegoated for everything whilst the guilty parties escape blame..again.

Obviously, the Newcastle result was disappointing. I really believed we could at least take a point, but we started badly and Nicolas Jackson making that stupid mistake compounded this. I felt we played well for the last hour and deserved a point, but the fact is, we lost, and naturally everyone is angry and despondent about our chances again.

The conversation often goes to the manager when we get a bad result. As Chelsea fans we’ve also been indoctrinated into this “blame the manager” mindset, because whenever we had bad form under our previous owner, the manager lost their job. So many of us default to that even if sometimes we don’t want to, just out of habit.

The problem is, that logic doesn’t work in modern football for me. We spent £800m plus between 2017-2022 under the old managerial mindset. We had 4 permament managers, won only 3 major trophies, and were 25-30 points off the champions every year. Whilst Liverpool spent less than us, smartly, with stability, and won everything in that time, with a manager they allowed four years and 3 lost finals to get it right. Hire and fire simply doesn’t work anymore.

And of course straight after a defeat, it can be tough to see things as objectively. Enzo Maresca has deserved a lot of criticism, and has got it from me at times. Objective criticism is always OK. However, with Maresca it seems some people on social media seem to have simply decided they don’t like Maresca and his football and want an excuse to force him out, so are looking for any reason to criticise him and also never give him credit for anything, which makes no sense to me.

I literally saw someone blame Enzo Maresca for Nicolas Jackson getting sent off, which is genuinely one of the most ridiculous things I’ve ever heard, as if he told Jackson to elbow the Newcastle player petulantly. Crazy. Someone else had a meltdown because he didn’t use the word “us” when staying we need to win both our games, as proof he’s a bad manager. Its ridiculous.

As I said, I fully understand people wanting to criticise Enzo Maresca and he’s deserved a fair bit of criticism. I’ve criticised him a lot myself. I’ll always give criticism to anyone if its deserved and he’s really annoyed me at times this season.

I’ve always been very clear that his style of football isn’t my preferred style, and maybe it never will be. But ultimately, style is less important to me than results, and if his style delivers results and trophies, I’ll be happy.

People are absolutely entitled to their views and to criticise him if its fair, and I have criticised him plenty. But for me its going way beyond fair criticism with some people now. These people either don’t like him personally or don’t like the football and are just looking for any confirmation bias to support their hatred for Maresca.

I don’t believe any manager could have dealt much better with us having basically one striker all season, having awful GK options who have cost us points, two awful transfer windows and no backup for Cole Palmer. No chance IMO. Maresca has been working with a hand tied behind his back all season.

We’ve created the second most big chances in the league and have the fourth best defence even with Sanchez in goal. To me its very obvious that if we’d had a proper striker and proper GK this season, we’d be secure in the CL right now, without any difference in performance, football philosophy or tactical decisions. And that has nothing to do with Enzo Maresca whatsoever, and everything to do with those above him.

I don’t see as much criticism of the Sporting Directors on socials now, which is staggering, given they are solely responsible for the squad build and, in my view, actively weakened us in the last two windows.

Our squad is in my view not any better than the one we had last season, and may even be worse. People are falling into the Sporting Directors usual trap yet again, absolving them of blame and thinking changing the manager makes it all magically OK.

The Sporting Directors have on balance done an awful job in the last 12 months, and that there’s no accountability, and not enough fan outrage for that is shocking. In my view remains that nothing is going to change until they either leave the club and/or the model is tweaked to add more experience. You could put any manager in place, nothing is going to change until things above him do.

I don’t expect things to change in those positions to be honest, Behdad Eghbali seems to love the Sporting Directors, but I won’t stop pointing out this problem. They don’t even have to leave, just tweak the strategy a little and maybe hire an elite CEO of Football with experience at big clubs. But it’s certainly not Maresca’s fault this squad isn’t strong enough.

Not to mention the deluge of negativity like we’re in really bad form is misplaced. We may not be as fluent as we were up to Christmas, but when you look at our last 10 PL games, Chelsea have won 6, drawn 2 and lost 2 of our those games. In the form guide for the last 10 PL games, we’re 5th, and only two points off the top placed team, Newcastle.

It’s a results business, and we have 20 points out of the last 30, which is basically two points per game. Take that form over a season, and we’d get 76 points. It’s not like we’re playing badly every week or losing lots of games.

So although performances haven’t been great (apart from Everton and Liverpool), we’re still grinding out results. And results are what matter at this point in the season.

Even against Newcastle, I feel we did enough with 10 men to deserve a point, and had a clear penalty denied. We showed fight and character in the second half with 10 men, and that gives me hope for our remaining games. At this time of the season, results matter most, not performances, and only 2 league defeats since February is pretty decent.

I think we’ll get at least 4 points from our last 2 games. Given Forest’s decline we may get 6. The Southampton result against Man City shows no result is certain the the final fixtures - if things go our way we might even secure effective CL qualification next weekend on goal difference.

The Newcastle game was frustrating and Nicolas Jackson let everyone down, but its far from the end of our CL hopes. And to my mind the issues we have are far more due to the poor recruitment and squad building, than who the manager is or the style of play.

I personally think as a fanbase we need to avoid the easy emotional reaction of blaming the manager for everything right now, and stop seeing everything through that lens.

Changing managers alone won’t solve anything, in my view. If we finish 6th and lose the Conference League final (which I think is unlikely), and Maresca leaves, still nothing will change unless things change above him. Unless we make good changes and improvements to the squad and our approach, who the manager is won’t actually matter, and we’ll not progress as a club.

Personally, I believe we just all need to support the team and manager for these final games and hopefully we can get over the line in the PL and Conference League.

Then it’ll be time to reflect and see what changes need to be made. But I’ll continue to argue change has to come higher up than the manager for any real change to happen.

The Score