Enzo Maresca has had a nice start to the season all things told. After a stressful summer and a worrying USA tour, things really reached a head with talk of a “civil war” among the owners.
But against that backdrop, Maresca kept his head down and his team ended up with really good record to start the season. Injuries have been minimal, results have been good, and the Italian coach has just been handed the Manager of the Month award for just his second month in charge of the team.
Things may get trickier after this two week break however. Suspensions and injuries are starting to kick in, with two of his regular back four set to miss the next game – which is away at Liverpool. There are also selection dilemmas which are going to make picking the same “Premier League XI” every week more and more tricky.
Nkunku needs minutes – and Maresca must figure out how to give them to him
Nobody is pushing harder for a first team start than Christopher Nkunku at the moment. He’s been great in our B team, banging in goals in the cups, but Maresca has held strong and not given him a sniff in the first team.
Last night he scored for France in their win over Israel in the Nations League, and continued to put the pressure on for more minutes in the Premier League. We don’t think Maresca is going to disrupt his preferred front 3 just yet, but getting Nkunku into the team somehow is now surely something of a priority, especially after a toothless display against Nottingham Forest last time out saw us drop 3 points.
This time a year ago we were struggling our way through games and counting the weeks until Nkunku came back from injury. It’s typical football that twelve months on, we’ve got a strange mirror of the same issue.