Maresca: ‘You cannot continue to give away presents’

For 53 minutes, it was all going to plan. Chelsea were in control, had scored one, could’ve had more, and kept Brighton off the board with relative ease. There were a couple dicey moments, and our initial impetus faded after taking the lead, but all we needed was a bit of a push at the start of the second half to get thats second goal and see out the result.

Instead, we shot ourselves in the foot once again, getting a red card and going down to 10 men for the fourth time in our last 19 games, and for the second time in as many Premier League games. We lost all four of those games. Not once did we look like not losing those four games, which isn’t great but wouldn’t be a problem if we just, you know, stopped collecting red cards. We only lost one other during that time, to Bayern Munich the other week.

If we’re looking for a silver lining, at least Enzo Maresca didn’t panic as hard as against Manchester United last weekend. He tried to protect the lead, then tried to protect the point — reasonable courses of action, even if he did it at the expense of taking away any remaining attacking threat and pace. But at least his substitutions were understandable this time.

What isn’t understandable is why we continue to gift goals, points, and wins to the opposition, and not just with red cards. Bayern’s goals were absolute gifts, as was the equalizer from Brentford. It’s not just one win in five, with more self-inflicted wounds that I care to count. At least in last night’s game, we finally scored first in a game this season — even Fulham and Crystal Palace had scored first before seeing their goals ruled out by VAR (somewhat luckily in both cases).

Needless to say, to get back to winning ways, we need to cut out these mistakes. All other factors, be that injuries, tactics, motivation, whathaveyou won’t matter if we keep doing this [SHOE].

“It’s a tough one because we were in control of the game, we scored one, we [could’ve] scored more, we didn’t concede nothing, they just said to me also in terms of data, we had so many shots in the first half, 70% of possession, everything was fine. And then suddenly, because of our mistake, and then with the red card, again, the plan completely changed. So for me we played two games, first-half, and then unfortunately after the red card.

“For sure you cannot continue to make mistakes, also because they are big mistakes in terms of game changes, the red card at Manchester United and the red card today. […] Against any team in the Premier League you cannot continue to give away presents, because what we are doing in this moment is to give away presents in terms of red cards, that is a big mistake because the game completely changed. […] I would like to tell you something different, but at the end it’s the reality of the last two games, unfortunately with two red cards everything changed.”

-Enzo Maresca

The pressure’s building on Maresca, from the fans, from the media, and perhaps from the Board as well with Eghbali & Co seen going to the dressing room after the game, which is common — “We have an office inside the changing room where after every game we sit and talk about the game,” said Maresca — but makes headlines when things are not going well.

It’s six points from the first six games. That will not do.