“Classic Enzo Maresca” – Sky pundit explains how Chelsea manager used favourite method to break down back 5 | OneFootball

Sky’s Saturday Night Football coverage of Chelsea’s win over Wolves last night was really nicely done, with Gary O’Neill and Darren Bent providing lots of insight into the Blues as they ramped up their efforts in the second half to score 3.

O’Neill calls 3-0 win a “classic Enzo Maresca performance”

Malo Gusto scores for Chelsea. (Photo by Steve Bardens/Getty Images)

O’Neill was a Premier League coach just a year ago and faced Enzo Maresca as Wolves boss back then. So he was in a great position to talk through the manager’s tactics:

“I think that’s a sort of a classic Enzo Maresca performance. That’s complete domination. Enzo uses 3-1-6 against the back five a lot, try and create overload, with six arriving in the box,” O’Neill explained.

“It works well for a couple of the goals. So that’s sort of Chelsea. You saw both sides of them, where it can look a bit stale first half and they don’t quite get their rhythm, and then second half, once they get their goal, they look completely dominant and very comfortable.

“But they’ve recruited, well. A lot of good young players, a good coach. I don’t see any reason that they don’t finish in the top four.”

The slow and stale starts are frustrating – but if every second half finds a breakthrough like this there won’t be many complaints.

In other news…

The stats from last night’s win are promising, especially when you look at the defence, who gave nothing away. It looks like we’ve finally got a settled pair of central defenders in Wesley Fofana and Trevoh Chalobah – if Maresca can stop tinkering.

Alejandro Garnacho was another Blue who did really well last night, and he was praised by his manager Enzo Maresca at full time. He’s got a huge role to play this season, and we’re finally now starting to see the best of him it seems.