Enzo Maresca is wrong, Chelsea are going backwards and the slide must be stopped | OneFootball

Despite the manager’s claims on the contrary , every element of his squad is underperforming

You can apply a fair pinch of salt to much of what most managers say in press conferences and Enzo Maresca is no different.

For Chelsea’s sake, you hope that some of Maresca’s more recent remarks fall into the former category; he surely cannot really believe that his team is better now than it was two months ago.

That was the claim made by the 44-year-old in the aftermath of Saturday’s 3-1 defeat to Manchester City. Two months ago, though, Chelsea were at the start of a five-match winning run that would take them onto Liverpool’s heels at the top of the table and make them look a near-certainty for Champions League football approaching the midway point of the campaign.

Nicolas Jackson is suffering his longest goal drought at Chelsea

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Now, they sit sixth, above Bournemouth only on goals scored, and with just one win, at home to relegation-threatened Wolves, to show for their last seven matches.

If there was an element of inevitable regression to the mean at the start of that run, then it has since become something more alarming.

Maresca has long insisted that results and the state of the table will not be his gauge for measuring the progress of his team, and there has been plenty of that in what is still little more than half-a-season in charge. It has, though, stalled badly since just before Christmas and almost every element of Chelsea’s squad is underperforming in comparison to what came before.

After a brief period of relative calm, Robert Sanchez is back to making costly errors. No combination of centre-backs has lived up to the promising partnership between Levi Colwill and Wesley Fofana that was interrupted when the latter ripped his hamstring against Aston Villa in December. Romeo Lavia continues to be a major miss whenever absent from midfield and with the Belgian repeatedly injured, both Enzo Fernandez and Moises Caicedo have dipped, perhaps no surprise considering their workloads.

Madueke has scored in back-to-back games but remains a frustratingly inconsistent player (with no one more obviously frustrated than his manager). While Jadon Sancho and Pedro Neto have dovetailed nicely at times, neither has yet been able to deliver the kind of output that would lessen Chelsea’s reliance on Cole Palmer. The pair’s performances have been better than a combined record of three goals in 37 league games suggests, but that remains a dismal return.

Romeo Lavia’s injury has affected the midfield

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Palmer, even through what feels like a quieter run of form, has as many goals as that in his last six outings alone, but Nicolas Jackson is now without one in seven, his longest drought in a Chelsea shirt.

Now firmly into the season’s back-nine, it is perhaps only at full-back, where Reece James has returned to fitness to give Maresca another option, that the coach can genuinely feel his team are now in better shape than they were approaching the turn.

What to blame? The inevitable inconsistencies of youth? Unfortunate coincidence in so many players’s form - good and bad - seeming synchronised? Injuries and fatigue now the opportunities for midweek rotation have dried up? A prolonged new manager surge fading, or simply rival teams beginning to work Maresca out?

Probably, these are all factors, which in turn means there ought to be multiple solutions for Maresca as he seeks to re-energise a top-four bid at home to West Ham on Monday night.

But as for his Chelsea being better than they were two months ago? Well, getting back to that level would be a start.