Enzo Maresca not getting the Chelsea credit he deserves from you, us or anyone else | OneFootball

In a season in which most teams are on the brink of crisis and are either plunged into one or avert it before the next inevitable fall from the path to greatness – admittedly more because of a demand for extreme opinions than anything else – Chelsea are perhaps the side granting the most scope for flip-flopping between excessive praise and unreasonable scolding.

Liverpool were very good for a while, at least in terms of their position in the table, then awful for a while longer, then sort of alright and now terrible again. Over at Chelsea there are regularly calls for Enzo Maresca to be sacked after one game and then reason to believe after the next that he may actually be the right man to carry this on their journey to “dominate English football for the next five to ten years”, as he said early in his tenure last season.

They’ve been billed as your classic ‘hard-to-work-out’ side, and that’s still very much the narrative despite winning seven of their last nine games in all competitions. The only blots on their copybook in that time – both of which led to quite significant upticks in Maresca sack traffic – have been a defeat to fourth-placed Sunderland, who just claimed a draw and scored two goals against league-leaders Arsenal, and a draw with Qarabag after a six-hour flight to Baku.

The scalps of Liverpool and Tottenham were met with something approaching disdain as the focus after those victories was on how bad those Big Six rivals were when Chelsea were really very good in both of those games.

And while we’re programmed to turn up our noses and dispute excuses no matter what they are, two of Chelsea’s three Premier League defeats – to Manchester United and then Brighton – coming after the Blues were reduced to 10 men feels more and more valid as a defence as they continue to win games with their full compliment.

In search of further mitigation, if indeed we need it with Chelsea sitting third in the Premier League table, their best centre-back, Levi Colwill, hasn’t played a game, and their talisman Cole Palmer, the ‘one’ in their one-man team ever since he joined the club, has played 235 minutes of football.

We would counter Wayne Rooney’s suggestion that the 93 changes he’s made to his starting line-ups this season will cause rifts in the squad and “come back to bite him” with the far more likely scenario of it paying dividends later in the campaign when the players of other clubs competing on four fronts are entirely knackered while Chelsea are able to stay the course. Let’s not forget they also played in (and won) the Club World Cup.

“If they are getting results all the time then you can’t question it but if they’re not, there has to be questions asked,” Rooney added. Probably can’t question it then, Wayne. Seven wins in nine.

A manager focused on the short term and their own job security would have played their full-strength team more often, but to the detriment of the club and their success further down the line. Maresca is giving ample opportunity to all of the young players in his squad, with a view to this season and the seasons of what looks increasingly likely to be that “dominance” he promised.

We can’t imagine there is a single player in that Chelsea squad who will be disappointed with the amount of football they’re playing and that’s an extraordinarily difficult balance to strike while winning games consistently.

Marc Guiu is the only member of the squad who’s featured for less than 350 minutes across all competitions and hasn’t had a major injury problem, and we suspect his 195 minutes will have come as a surprise to him as well as everyone else.

Maresca has managed Reece James brilliantly and we’re getting to a point now where we’re struggling to come up with a player at Chelsea who hasn’t improved under his leadership. Moises Caicedo, Enzo Fernandez and Marc Cucurella are now widely regarded as among the best in their positions having been roundly mocked when they arrived at Stamford Bridge.

Alejandro Garnacho will provide a true test of his ability to polish a rough diamond but the early signs are good. Even Robert Sanchez is starting to look the part.

With Barcelona and Arsenal to come soon after the international break, following Burnley at Turf Moor in their first game back, we hope this love-in will serve as a reminder – to us knee-jerk berks as much as anyone reading – that defeat to one or both of those sides, or indeed even to Burnley, does not mean that Chelsea are pants, that Maresca isn’t capable or that ‘what they really need in January is some experience’.

The Chelsea project is going swimmingly and Maresca looks every bit the manager they need to lead them on the path to glory, which may not come this year, but will very likely arrive in the not-too-distant future.