Maresca makes vicious personal takedown of Chelsea star’s disaster performance on Wednesday | OneFootball

Chelsea lost to Leeds on Tuesday and it brought back up the same old questions for Enzo Maresca in the press conference today – why had the manager rotated his team so much? And was there a lack of experience in his squad?

Maresca slams one player for performance against Leeds

Tosin Adarabioyo duels vs. Leeds. (Photo by Shaun Botterill/Getty Images)

On the latter subject, Maresca pointed out that nobody was talking about experience the week before, when his team got two really impressive results:

“We always talk about experience when we drop points, [but] when we beat Barcelona, we drew against Arsenal, no one was mentioning about experienced players,” the Chelsea boss said.

“So, again, I understand that when we don’t win, we are always looking for the reason why, but I think the reason why we didn’t win against Leeds is not because of the experience, it’s because we were not good enough.

“We have experienced players. Unfortunately, they were not all on the pitch. One because he was suspended, the other one because of injury. So, it’s because in that moment, the ones that have more experience, they were out. Who is the oldest one for us in the pitch? Who was? Tosin. Did he play good? So, it’s not about experience. It’s about that 11 players, they were not good enough. I know that we are always looking for experience, but it was a bad game for all of us.”

It’s a fair point – but it’s a stinging dismissal of Tosin, who was really thrown under the bus here.

We’re pretty sure that Maresca wasn’t planning on using him again anytime soon – at least until the Cardiff game in two weeks – but this still a brutal put down from the boss.

In other presser news…

The Chelsea manager defended his rotation policy in general, making some very fair points about the players he had chosen to leave out for this game.

Maresca was also asked about the aftermath of Tuesday’s game against Leeds – and his answer didn’t give much confidence that things will have changed since then.