Enzo Maresca should ask John Terry for a reminder of Chelsea standards!
John Terry's comments show up the lack of standards by Maresca & Co
Chelsea head coach Enzo Maresca has been under a lot of fire in recent weeks. Results haven’t been consistent and performances have been declining. Fans are becoming bored and frustrated.
Up to the Brentford home game - 17 games in - we were on over 2 points per game. 35 points from 17 PL games. That would have seen us at nearly 70 points by now if continued.
But then, beginning with the Everton away game on 22 December - approximately 4 months, nearly half a season - Chelsea have 19 points in 15 PL games. 19 out of 45 PL points. That’s a point per game of 1.26. Over 38 games, a normal league season, that ratio would see us finish with approximately 48 points. This would have seen us finish 11th in the Premier League last season.
Graham Potter’s overall points per game at Chelsea - 1.27 - was actually better than Maresca’s since 22 December, though they’d finish on the same points after 38 games.
15 games, 4 months, it's a substantial period of time. It's not just a poor run of form, it's a proper decline. Now, you can argue the squad building has been abysmal and injuries and overplaying of certain players hasn’t helped, and that’s true. All these factors are hugely important and the people above Maresca need to be held accountable.
A decline was always going to happen from the sensational form up to the Brentford game, but to drop off this much is unacceptable regardless of injuries and squad build. Only 6-7 points more in that time - 2 or 3 results different - and we’re clear in the top 5 race and in a strong position.
In this context, Enzo Maresca this week came out with these comments:
“I'm not going to judge the last two seasons because I was not here but this season, we can reach a European semi-final and we have been top four almost all season compared to the last two seasons where the team has been zero times in the top four.
In the last two years, Chelsea have been in the top four zero times. This season, we have been in the top four most of the season.
This is the reason why fans need to trust us, trust the team and trust the club.”
Enzo Maresca
This comes across to me like we’ve made progress this season, based on the fact we were in the top 4 most of the season. As in, where we finish is almost irrelevant because we were in the top 4 most of the season, and this is fine according to Maresca. No mention of this huge drop off in form in the last few months. Maresca seems to think this is progress.
Now, I had liked Maresca. I’ve been defending him in recent weeks. The football up to December was brilliant and I felt injuries and squad issues had been the main reason for the drop off. What I didn’t realise until recently was the sheer level of drop off we’d had in the last four months.
The Ipswich game was a wake up call for me. That was a must win, should have been a routine win. We had close to our strongest team out too, at home. But we absolutely blew it. It sapped a lot of my confidence for this season.
Then he made those comments post match blaming fans for the goals we conceded, and by definition the result. And now these comments insult fans' intelligence saying we’ve made progress because we were in the top 4 for a long time and we should trust him because of that progress.
No Enzo Maresca, we don’t have to trust you when we’ve been in mid table form for four months, our performances have regressed, and we’ve taken one point from two games against Ipswich Town.
To even try and justify this form with these comments is embarrassing and disrespectful to fans who pay good money to watch this team.
I don’t like using the term standards, but being in the top 4 for a few months isn’t progress or success at Chelsea Football Club. Behdad, the sporting directors, if they think it is, they need a a major wake up call .
And maybe that wake up call came recently from the Captain, Leader, Legend, John Terry.
In March he was interviewed about Chelsea’s season and says although he expected a small drop off, that the standards were these:
“Champions League has to be the minimum every year for me. When you’re playing at a top club like Chelsea, the mentality has to be Champions League Football year after year.”
John Terry
Top 4 is literally the bare minimum standard at Chelsea Football Club, its not an achievement to brag about. We’ve been awful for 4 months and Enzo insults us by telling us we’re progressing? That attitude doesn’t belong at Chelsea quite frankly.
At this rate Enzo will say getting to the Europa Conference final will be enough to make a successful season. When for me (and many others), not even winning it makes it successful if we fail to get Champions League.
And of course this mentality probably stems from those above him who seem to twist any small tiny success into an achievement to justify their jobs.
Let me tell you Sporting Directors, when you spend £1 billion on the squad, you get no credit for reaching the top 4 or winning the Conference League. That’s literally the bare minimum for that level of spend. Newcastle have had more success spending half of that.
Anything less than regular Champions League is failure, and as such, we’re on course for failure this season. We’ve not progressed this season, we’ve stood still at best, regressed at worst.
We had the Champions League qualification in the pocket after 17 games and have blown it ourselves. No one else has. That's a bottle job of Spursy proportions. It's embarrassing for the badge and the name of the club, and it seems Enzo Maresca almost taking pride in the fact we were at least fourth for a lot of the season, which is disgraceful.
God knows what JT made of those comments, he must be seething. For many, it’s like watching the decline of a formerly great club in front of our eyes. The standards, as they say, are now on the floor, and that starts from those at the very top.
I’m not yet calling for Maresca to be sacked. It’s the last thing I want really. We need some stability in the head coach position. But Maresca isn’t doing himself any favours and I’m beginning to lose confidence in him. These comments in particular really annoyed me.
If Behdad Eghbali is reading this, let me tell you: Do you want us to win the big trophies, you really want us to be successful? If so, then set some higher standards for success for everyone at the club, and hire best in class people to achieve it. Because many of us are done with the excuses of you and some of the poorly performing people you have hired to run the men's side keep making for failure.
The Score
I don’t think the football up until December was brilliant but we got some results even when we didn’t play well. It’s only brilliant in comparison. I really dislike a high turnover of players and managers it’s dysfunctional. The coach looks out of his depth and a lot of the players look they don’t want to be there.
I actually think things have reached the stage where Maresca can’t be boss beyond the final game of this season. The anger seems too strong and widespread for him to survive and, sooner or later, he’ll be gone, rightly or wrongly because it’ll reach the stage where the fans just won’t have him any more - if it hasn’t already.
On only a few occasions have I thought that our football could be described as “brilliant”. When in form, we were pretty good but it always had the slow, Lordy, sideways and backwards passing, and the goal kicks from keeper to defender, and back, in the six yard box. Before Christmas, it had, for me, become a really tough watch and now the results have gone south. I dread another season of this in 2025-26.
In fact, I believe that, if we persist with him, we’ll be in the same position as Spurs and United currently are in the Prem. Only, next year, I worry that not only will we be in the bottom half, we’ll be looking over our shoulders at how far we are from the bottom three. Just because we won the UCL twice in the last 13 years, we’re not so good as to be “relegation proof”
I’d also be interested in whether anyone gets any dressing room feedback about how much the players actually ENJOY playing this way when, as the good players that most clearly are, they would have so much more to give in a more expansive tactical set-up under a braver manager. They need setting free to express themselves.
We mustn’t fall into the trap where we end up following the definition of insanity which, I believe, is “doing the same thing over and over and expecting the same results”. It’s stopped working with Maresca and carrying on with him in the longer term would surely be “insane”.