Football always evolves – Enzo Maresca defends Chelsea’s playing style | OneFootball

Chelsea head coach Enzo Maresca said his team aims to score “when we need to” after supporters jeered their blunted efforts during Sunday’s narrow win over second-bottom Leicester.

The 1-0 victory at Stamford Bridge made for difficult watching at times with Chelsea committed rigidly to Maresca’s method of keeping the ball and slowing down the play – even when chances arose to hit one of the Premier League’s most porous defences on the break.

Despite fans’ unhappiness at a lack of movement and pace from their side, only leaders Liverpool have scored more than the 53 goals netted by the Blues in their 28 matches, an increase of six from the same point last season.

Maresca has repeatedly made it clear that the players are under instruction to play in a certain way.

On Sunday, he said he would have substituted Enzo Fernandez had he ignored his commands to build from the back despite the midfielder being loudly criticised by supporters for not playing forwards.

“Football always evolves,” said Maresca, whose side take a 2-1 aggregate lead into the home leg of their Conference League last-16 tie against Copenhagen on Thursday.

“We have 20 clubs in the Premier League, more or less we are all different. There are teams that play to be aggressive and high pressing, teams that prefer to sit back and go in transition.

“I think off the ball the way we have played since the start is quite clear. We try to be aggressive. And on the ball we try to control the game and score when we need to score, defend when we need to defend.

“In this moment I think we are the second or third best attacking team in the Premier League, so that means we are scoring a lot of goals. Defending also we are there. But we can attack better and we can defend better.”

Cole Palmer is fit to face the Danish side after he was withdrawn late on in the win over Leicester.

The England forward suffered from a stomach upset ahead of the match and also missed training on Tuesday, but took part in Wednesday’s session alongside Christopher Nkunku and Reece James, who have also recovered from knocks.

“Today they trained with us, took part in the session,” said Maresca. “We’ll see for tomorrow if we’re going to use some of them.

“The only new one that is still injured is Malo Gusto. Then Noni (Madueke) is still out, Nico (Nicolas Jackson) is out. But the rest can play.”

Maresca backed Palmer to recover from the penalty miss against Leicester that extended his goalless run to eight games and ended his perfect record from the spot.

“Cole is going to miss more penalties, and the reason is because (he is) the one in charge. If you don’t shoot, you don’t miss,” he said.

“I don’t have any doubt that in future he’s going to miss more but he’s going to score more. The penalty the other day didn’t affect him in a negative way.”