Simon Johnson’s piece from the Athletic this weekend about Chelsea’s season has an ominous warning for manager Enzo Maresca, who Johnson warns is “in a dangerous moment”
The Brighton parallels at the moment are so strong. As Jamie Carragher pointed out in commentary for the game, the pain of losing to them is magnified because we’ve spent the best part of £250m on their staff and players in recent years.
The fact we did that only for them to beat us comfortable, twice in a week, is just embarrassing. The fact that our owners are actively trying to turn is into Brighton just makes things more painful.
But there’s more to it than that. Johnson looks back at a game in October 2022 as a turning point for Graham Potter – the manager we had poached from the Seagulls just a month before. The Blues were blasted 4-1 in that game, but at least managed 7 shots on target (they managed 0 on Saturday).
From that point, Potter’s team were in a negative spiral they could never get out of.
They lost 10 of their next 21 games and won just 6 of them. He was sacked in the spring.
Chelsea at risk of negative spiral again
Johnson stops short of saying Maresca’s job is at risk – for one thing, he built up a much better cushion in terms of results before this stumble began. But it’s true that the Italian coach is proving to be equally incapable of turning a bad run around.
Chelsea have not won away in the league since the 8th of December, and have 9 points from their last 9 games. More worryingly, the further they fall, the worse they seem to get. They played pretty well until conceding on Saturday, then pretty much gave up on getting a result.
Are they now going to give up on this season too?
If Chelsea FC wants to become champion of EPL and UCL …. They have to buy this player’s WIRTZ , GITTEN , DELAP , 2 quality centre back and quality GK and offload Sanchez and please hire a world class manager . This current manager of Chelsea FC is one dimensional ….. No defence and no adjustments tactically . Bring back petrovic and stay with Jorgensen . There are quality free agent players available to reinforce this team . This team needs experience quality players to mix with current squad . But the problem is the owners and the boards of directors are obsessed of buying young players and not playing them straight away . And other problems right now the one dimensional manager . Look how he treat professional quality experience player’s like Felix and chilwell and others . He destroyed the confidence of this squad . Bring in Zola to assist this manager but needs overall of the squad . Replace injury prone players , it’s distracting the team . Bringing quality experience player’s with a strong desire of winning every game . Mr Maresca villa will destroy you on your next game if you won’t change your mind set . You need to play 3 man midfield and let Enzo lead the attack and play Palmer in the wing with gusto and Neto upfront . Acheampong at RB and shift colwill at LB and play cucu with caceido in central midfield . Watch villa wings . God bless you Chelsea FC . Hope miracles happen for Chelsea FC to win games for their remaining matches coming . They need to qualify for UCL now not 2 or 3 yrs time .