“Maresca’s worst game” – Chelsea boss reached new low in this important category says pundit | OneFootball

Enzo Maresca’s substitutions on Saturday after Chelsea went down to ten men have generated a lot of controversy.

The coach needed to bring on a goalkeeper, and he did so by sacrificing a winger. But in the same moment he also took off his OTHER winger, for a defender. This left Chelsea with just Joao Pedro up top, no out ball and no threat on the counter.

Before long they were 2-0 down anyway, despite the extra defender.

Jessica Frota was on the London is Blue podcast to analyse the game, and she didn’t hold back in her criticism of the move.

Maresca’s “worst game” for game management

Enzo Maresca shouts instructions on the touchline. (Photo by Alex Livesey/Getty Images)

“It was the worst game I’ve ever seen from Maresca in terms of game management. When we have Estevao Willian making his runs and you have the width on the left hand side, and you have Pedro Neto and you stretched the pitch, it leaves space towards the middle for other players to contribute and to arrive in the box. And we also didn’t have that. We knew we were going to have to defend a lot because we were one man down, but we left ourselves short on the counter.

You can see her speaking in the clip embedded here:

Cowardly Chelsea gave up on points

Presenter Nick Verlaney had similar issues. He brought up a screenshot of a Chelsea counter where Joao Pedro was surrounded by a sea of red shirts to illustrate how toothless the changes had left Chelsea.

“Look, Joao Pedro on the break against one, two three, four, five, six, seven United players, all by himself. If you’re down after the 27th minute by two goals and that is your strategy, it begs a lot of questions.”

The facf that Manchester United then got a red made Maresca’s decision look even more short sighted and cowardly.