25 Oct 2025 18:26:20
Ed001
I would appreciate your thoughts on Maresca.
I personally think his play is boring and slow and is far too cautious.
{Ed001's Note - for me I would agree, I don't enjoy watching your team play. He is one of the new breed of coaches who overcomplicates a simple game and gives players little freedom to play. A lot of the time that leads to mistakes as they are having to think about what they do each time they get the ball, rather than just being free to play on instinct. But that seems to, sadly, be the modern way in this sport. We now have 11 robots a side running round adhering to instructions, rather than Estevao just running riot and giving the fans true entertainment.
You have the players to go at opponents, I would love to see that happen, but Maresca is very much safety first. He plays to not lose and hopefully win, rather than setting out to win from the kick off. Defensively, you still look so suspect. It doesn't matter who is playing in the backline, any team can get at you, which is costing you badly. When you all rave about how great Caicedo is, how can the defence be so open? That is something that Maresca needs to look at, especially if he is going to continue to play so slowly.
With the players you have, he will always be able to get results, it is now just about him developing the next step - consistency and solidity at the back. He is a young coach, still learning, so there is a chance for him to take that step. It might be a case of finding the right assistant whose ideas mesh well with Maresca, but who can organise the defence. The assistants are as important as the head coach these days.}
26 Oct 2025 07:28:47
Thankyou for your views on Maresca ED01 and I fully agree with you on how modern day coaches are setting up their teams, it is such a shame for the game as most fans want to see entertainment and flair. You rightly point out that Maresca is young and learning his trade and I agree a new assistant coach to compliment his skillset would be a great idea.
A bit of defensive stability is what we need right now and I'm hoping he can settle on a centre back pairing.
{Ed001's Note - difficult to do that with the injuries you are getting, to be fair. Though of course that could have been mitigated by not buying a player such as Fofana, who is injury prone.}
26 Oct 2025 07:43:13
Thanks for your question Bill and your very full and persuasive answer Ed001. My hope is that Maresca was appointed mainly cos of his experience with the City academy to try and aupervise the early years of Vision 2030.
26 Oct 2025 07:47:42
And that Maresca as you suggest is hopefully learning his trade along the way which is not least to build that consistency and find ways to win in most matches.
26 Oct 2025 08:18:45
We may all see success differently and my guess is we all want to be entertained differently. I thought that last season was successful and generally speaking I was ok with the football we played. Other supporters see it differently and that’s ok.
Maybe some fans put “entertainment” above “results. ” I see it as a balance between the two, I find winning when we haven’t played well makes me almost as happy as when we have played well and won.
Recently the spuds had a manager who wanted to entertain by playing a certain style and the fans and owners soon fell out of love with that method of playing when the results went against them. Maybe we have the players that can do both but j just don’t see too many managers taking that risk.
Will the manager get judged on results or entertainment? History surely dictates it’s generally the former. Maybe that’s part of the problem, it could just be our reasonable or maybe unreasonable expectations that are problem and of course we all see things differently.
26 Oct 2025 09:27:58
Good point ED01 about the CB's and our injurys, Levi is a big miss for us and finding a settled back line has hindered Maresca. What number 2 would you go for to assist and compliment Maresca?
{Ed001's Note - I would have wanted him to have a very experienced man alongside him. It is mostly about giving a different viewpoint, you don't want someone who thinks the same, you want them to offer a completely different set of ideas. Preferably a former manager, someone like a Sean O'Driscoll-type, so that they don't need the job and can argue their case without worry of being sacked for disagreeing. I suggested O'Driscoll as he was very good initially at Liverpool as assistant, when he was allowed a full voice. I also happened to live in Doncaster for a while during his time in charge there and knew a bunch of their players who loved him.}
26 Oct 2025 09:39:02
Well argued Tom.
But of course whether a manager can win and enbtertain at the same time largely depends on having the quality of players to do this. But it does happen as we saw with King Carlo's CFC team 2009-10 or with Mourinho's second season team in particular 2005-6. And much of peak Guardiola City football or Klopp LFC provided this too I thought. Otherwise it it may ofte be a matter of relying on one or two players in an otherwise well drilled side that mightn play quite a lot of boring sideways passing football to provide some spark of the beautiful game: notably most recently Hazard when with us plus Palmer moments and most recently flashes of joyful stuff from Estevao.
But to be fair to Maresca probably neither of our defense or attack are good enough (yet at least) to consistently combine entertainment with wins. And though we have v fine midfielfders and pre-eminently Caicedo when without Palmer - and he is a giant miss at the moment - our midfield seems unlikely to provide heaps of goals or assists.
26 Oct 2025 11:02:46
JBS, It’s impossible in my opinion to makes all of the fans happy all of the time.
My very narrow measurement of “Chelsea” success is winning trophies. That means more to me than entertainment. Other clubs fans well may have a different measurement of success. For some it could be to remain in a particular division for others it could mean financial survival. As a long standing Chelsea fan I been through all of those different aspects of measuring success.
Let’s remember that generally speaking a manager is judged as successful by winning games. He will probably manage accordingly.
26 Oct 2025 12:09:31
Thanks ED01, I can see the logic in that. I actually don't think we are that far off the top sides and with a fully fit squad will likely go close in our hunt for trophies which is all that matters to most fans and certainly owners and sponsors.