I saw what Enzo Maresca did vs Arsenal – Moises Caicedo and Mikel Arteta are wrong about Chelsea

I saw what Enzo Maresca did vs Arsenal – Moises Caicedo and Mikel Arteta are wrong about Chelsea

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When an opposition manager is so complimentary about you after a win, it isn't a good sign. Just ask Pep Guardiola and the many coaches he would praise off the back of a beating.

Mikel Arteta's comments on Chelsea after Sunday's 1-0 defeat felt similar. "They can open you up, they can run in transition, they have individual quality, any player in the defensive line can throw you in behind, they can combine on both sides, on weak sides and they are missing some big players as well," he said.

"We have conceded almost nothing apart from that strange save from David [Raya], I would say and that's a big credit to the team because in my opinion they [Chelsea] are the best attacking team in the league."

When asked why, Arteta added: "It's my opinion. I have a lot of data, the objective one, what it says and as well what I've seen in the games that they play." He finished: "By a mile, I mean the stats say it and everything that I've seen, say it."

Maresca seemed to agree. “We are in the right path,” he mused at full-time. “There wasn’t a big difference between them and us in terms of creating chances. We could create something more for sure. In the end we lost from set-pieces.”

'Could' is the right word, because Chelsea didn't really create anything. There is still some truth in what he said. The open-play xG [expected goals] metrics were close enough. 0.57-0.36. It was a low-quality match which was ultimately decided by a corner. No big chances were created by either side. Chelsea ended the game with more possession.

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Maresca's analysis summed this up. "I think we struggled a little bit at the beginning," he said. "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."

That is also born out in the numbers. Chelsea hardly got out of their own half for half an hour before taking control but lacking any cutting edge. The closest they came was Raya almost spilling a comfortable shot into his net.

Their highest quality effort was from Christopher Nkunku and it was blocked. Robert Sanchez was the much busier of the goalkeepers (although some of that was of his own making), and when chasing the game at 1-0 down after the break Chelsea mustered just a single shot on target.

That came from Marc Cucurella's back post header and it could have been chested down by Raya before being collected, such was the threat it posed. Pedro Neto's two long-range attempts were a long way over.

In one sense, an out-of-form attack against the league's best defence is likely to end this way more often than not. What frustrated supporters is that Chelsea never picked up the tempo or had an answer for the problems in front of them.

Maresca can rightly point to the weak bench available and ask just what he was meant to do. Tyrique George coming on a bit earlier is about the only thing.

That does little to appease supporters who have been restless even during victories in recent weeks. Chelsea were good enough to beat Southampton, Leicester, and Copenhagen over two legs. They did not inspire confidence at any stage and left many wondering where the intent was going to come from.

Without Cole Palmer it was nearly non-existent. When he was playing Chelsea were still struggling. The easy retort to make is that Nicolas Jackson and Noni Madueke will bolster the team upon their return but both had been part of the side who were losing to Ipswich Town, Fulham, and Manchester City. Madueke played one-and-a-bit of the Brighton defeats.

Chelsea's underlying numbers are still pretty strong, as Maresca and Arteta allude to. They are second in the league for xG (according to FBref), behind only Liverpool, and rank third for expected points (based on the xG in matches). The defence is much more middling. The team’s trajectory is on the way down, though, and their position in the top four/five owes more to the inconsistency of rivals and a generous run of fixtures before the run-in than genuine quality on show.

Maresca has said for months that Chelsea are a better side now than they were, but that is no longer true. The frighteningly slow style of play has halted any attacking dynamism whilst individual form of the forwards has hit a wall across the board.

Levi Colwill said earlier this month that Maresca is 'lightyears' ahead of other managers in the way he thinks about the game. On the field that has manifested itself in the club's best right-back playing in midfield whilst the best centre-back is at right-back and the best left-back is in areas usually occupied by No.10s.

Home and away against Copenhagen, the free man after creating an overload was Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall: hardly a threat. The wingers are almost always doubled up on in scenarios which simply do not suit their style. Enzo Fernandez, the team's best progressive passer, has been instructed to play the ball backwards more often.

These are the complaints and gripes which many online and in person have been venting. Maresca has not found a way of remedying matters.

Moises Caicedo went on to claim that Chelsea were beaten by a team who have been together for seven years but again, the reality is vastly different. The bulk of Arsenal's current squad have been under Arteta since the summer of 2022. Nobody has been about for the full seven years – not even Arteta himself. An attempt to rewrite the match with Chelsea as 'better than them' is simply wrong.

Both Caicedo and Colwill have a duty to uphold positivity and to speak well of matters publicly. The worry is that Chelsea really do think they are on the path to glory here.

Backing Maresca takes time and there was evidence of a top young coach in the opening months of the season. The longer the team has been under his watch the worse it has become. That is a damning set of affairs, one which is admittedly not helped by patchy squad building and woefully inefficient allocation of resources.

Chelsea have total buy-in with Maresca, a coach they are fully behind. He is struggling to solve the problems in front of him right now, though, and no amount of words from Arteta, Colwill, and Caicedo can change that or convince others that this is the pathway to success.

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Story SavedYou can find this story in My Bookmarks.Or by navigating to the user icon in the top right.Follow Football LondonFacebookX (Twitter)CommentMore On

• Enzo Maresca
• Levi Colwill
• Arsenal vs Chelsea
• Mikel Arteta