We wrote an opinion piece yesterday about Enzo Maresca’s claims following the loss to Man City that his team were improving, despite results going against them.
“In my opinion, we are a better team than one month ago, two months ago. This kind of moment, these kinds of games — for sure, they are going to make us better because we need to live this experience,” the manager said. The idea is that suffering those bad moments will make the team strong in the long run.
Clearly, we disagreed with that notion. And Liam Twomey of the Athletic followed it up with a similar piece that went into more detail in terms of disproving the idea.
He points to all the same things we did: the way that the “intensity and energy” that carried us through the early season “tends to dissipate at the first real sign of opposition resistance.”
Twomey also points to Maresca’s personal failings here, saying that there was “no obvious input from the touchline to slow the shifting momentum.”
That’s true the subs, the tactics, the motivation from the coach isn’t there. He’s failing to help them turn things around once they go sour.
This doesn’t compare favourably to last season’s game, where Mauricio Pochettino’s team “set up on Guardiola’s side with a fierce intensity,” something Maresca’s team “seem incapable of sustaining.”
Chelsea lack the desire and the belief to take on top teams

Twomey’s conclusions are the same as ours, ultimately. It doesn’t matter how good the players in your squad are, or how tactically smart the manager. If they don’t believe they’re good enough, and they don’t try hard enough, they’re not going to achieve anything.
Just look at the Premier League table now – hard work and belief are counting for more than net spend, from top to bottom. Chelsea are into a negative spiral now where bad results are draining their confidence, which is hurting their results.
Please sack Enzo Maresca now. The pains is too much to bear. The team is going down and down
The match wasn’t lost for poor tactics or lack of energy or intensity. The whole thing pivoted on two massive mental errors—the first from Madueke when he played the entire City front line onsides in the run up to the equalizer and the second when Sanchez needlessly charged out to retrieve a ball he was never going to get and left his net wide open for the second goal. If we don’t concede these two really poor goals we’re in the match with at least a chance to draw on the road against a much-improved (from previous weeks) City side. So, I don’t think Maresca is as far off in his appraisal as SuperFrank (or Twomey) make out. Sure, we didn’t look ready to win the match, but, I honestly don’t think we’ll be in any position to EXPECT to beat top sides like City (especially on the road) until we replace Sanchez. Right now his propensity for a BAD error in nearly every match is undermining the confidence of the whole squad and no team is going to win regularly if they don’t have a solid foundation (at the back) on which to build. We can wring our hands about this or that finer point, but it’s ridiculous to keep ignoring the elephant in the room—we’re trying to qualify for the Champions League with a keeper who was already cast off by a lesser Premier League club and who has demonstrated time and again that he is simply incapable of playing the style of football this manager demands. So until we replace him the rest of these arguments about the performances are mostly academic. #demandSanchezreolacement