Enzo Maresca “screws up” Chelsea team selection and tactics; Nicolas Jackson takes the heat off | OneFootball

The London is Blue podcast’s episode from yesterday broke down Chelsea’s defeat to Newcastle at the weekend, and they weren’t happy with how Enzo Maresca had picked his team or set up the players.

Maresca “screws up” selection and in game tactics

“We need our biggest players on our biggest stage. Reece James is one of our biggest, if not our biggest, player. And if that doesn’t work, we can roll Caicedo back there. And really try to win the midfield,” presenter Nick Verlaney said of the decision to keep James on the bench where he’s been in recent weeks.

“And then, not only does Maresca screw that up. Newcastle don’t play a back 5 very often, but they roll out with a back 5 [in this game], with a box midfield that was set in front of back 5 so that Cole Palmer couldn’t operate at all. We never reacted to that. So the pre-game management was bad, the player selection was bad, and the recognition of what Newcastle was doing never really went anywhere, until it was too late.”

There’s a few things at play there. We would also play Reece James in these games, and we also would use Moises Caicedo in midfield where he is most effective. But we can’t deny that this setup worked well in the last few games, and we can see why Maresca persisted with it, at least at first.

Maresca gets off the hook thanks to Jackson red

Nicolas Jackson reacts to his shocking red. (Photo by Stu Forster/Getty Images)

It does feel a little like the flak Nicolas Jackson is getting is distracting from the mistakes Maresca made. Chelsea looked totally unprepared both mentally and tactically for the game, the goal we conceded after 2 minutes had nothing to do with the red card, indeed a large part of the frustration that Jackson felt which likely contributed to his poor decision was likely down to how isolated he had been in the game so far thanks to the way his team were being dominated by Newcastle.

Things might have been different had he stayed on the pitch – but let’s not fool ourselves into thinking that was a likely outcome, given how the game had gone up until that point.