Frank Leboeuf has been very critical of Chelsea when they’ve been bad recently, but recently he’s had to hand it to them: they’ve been in great form and he’s going to deny it.
He did have one criticism of the game against Brighton, and it’s one he applied to both teams after they each had hairy moments when trying to keep the ball and pass it around deep in their own areas.
“I have one [piece of] advice for the two coaches of these teams: stop playing from the back, guys! You don’t have the personnel for that,” Leboeuf said on ESPN.
While Brighton’s issues came more from their high line than any messing around in the box, both of the goals Chelsea conceded were directly related to players trying to play their way out of trouble rather than belting it clear.
Goalkeeper Robert Sanchez even apologised for his role in the second goal, where he played a hospital pass to a marked teammate who had no chance in avoiding having the ball nicked off him.
Enzo Maresca heads off criticism
But Maresca has already attempted to head off any criticism. In his press conference after the game, he said he had encouraged his goalkeeper by telling him to shrug off the mistake and expect it to happen again:
“I said to Robert [Sanchez] we will concede 10 more goals like the second one because it is the way we want to play,” the manager said.
Clearly he’s not going to see eye to eye with Frank on this one. There are certainly some players in this team capable of playing out intricately from defence – we’re just not sure Sanchez is one of them. We will have to look back at the end of the season and see if it’s brought us more goals than it’s cost us.