“Everton were not worried” – Maresca’s Malo Gusto decision questioned after attacking dud | OneFootball

Liam Twomey was at Goodison Park yesterday for the Athletic– a long way to go for a pretty dire 0-0.

Sean Dyche’s Everton sat deep with the intention of defending Chelsea out of the game, and they managed it. Compared to some recent games where we’ve looked unstoppable, this was a very different story.

In part you’ve just got to credit Dyche and his team, who are one of the best defensive sides in Europe. But there were still some questions about Chelsea boss Enzo Maresca’s approach. Twomey points out that his decision to put Enzo Fernandez deeper despite recent successes in attack was questionable:

“Would it not have been better to have Malo Gusto invert into the base of midfield and push Enzo Fernandez further forward into the left pocket, from where his late runs into the opposition box have yielded a rich vein of scoring form in recent weeks?

“Instead, it was Gusto who was tasked with jumping all the way forward from left-back, where he was deputising for the suspended Marc Cucurella, into the final third, where the precision of his passing did not match that of his Chelsea peers. Everton were not worried by him.”

As Twomey goes on to say, this then meant the Toffees could devote more resources to stopping Cole Palmer and Jadon Sancho – which they did really effectively.

Enzo Maresca answers questions about decision

Enzo Maresca and Jadon Sancho at full time against Everton. (Photo by Lewis Storey/Getty Images)

This is a question which Maresca actually addressed in his comments after the game when asked about how he had intended to improve things in attack later on:

“For sure, we could attack better but there was not space for Cole [Palmer]. In the last half an hour, we tried to move Enzo [Fernandez] as an attacking midfielder, with Malo [Gusto] next to Moi [Caicedo] to change something.”