It was a pretty positive presser for Enzo Maresca today – the team come into this game off the back of a win, and there was no tense ownership chat as there was last week.
The injury news was the only slight downer – Malo Gusto and Reece James are still out, which means we’re likely to see Axel Disasi used out of position once again at right back.
This decision has Chelsea fans pulling their hair out every week, given there’s a brilliant academy option in that position in Josh Acheampong. Maresca was asked about the defender and why he wasn’t considering using him.
It’s the same old weak excuses we get from every coach… what a pity. No wonder Newcastle are circling, hoping they can steal a third Cobham talented full back from us.
You can see the coach speaking in the clip embedded here, with this answer coming after ten minutes:
Why can’t Chelsea bring academy players into the first team? Why was Liverpool able to bring their academy graduates into a cup final last season and beat us?
You’d think the answer would be patently obvious, SuperFrank! When a club commits long-term to a manager and his philosophy and style of play then you can recruit players who fit it and train them (up and down the academy) to play in that system. However, Chelsea HAVE NOT DONE THIS and the inability to consistently bring along youth players and transition them seamlessly into the first team is one of the terrible costs of the managerial instability we’ve seen over the last +25-30 years!
Take, for example, how difficult our first-team defenders have found it to adjust to the demands of Maresca’s system. They are older, more experienced and have had far more reps working with Maresca over the last couple of months than the academy players and they STILL struggle to execute Maresca’s system. So it would be insane, bordering on cruel, to throw the academy lads into the lineup! There’s a reason that Pep completely overhauled the City defense when he arrived and it’s because his style requires the highest level of technical ability, positional awareness, and decision-making from defenders. And if you take academy players, who haven’t been brought up in that system, and throw them in the deep end—expecting them to execute that system in a Premier League match—you are courting absolute disaster.