Football writer Alex Keble looks at how Enzo Maresca has turned Chelsea into genuine title contenders.
Enzo Maresca insists Chelsea are not in the Premier League title race, but he won’t get away with that line for much longer.
Chelsea are just four points behind leaders Liverpool and only play one of last season’s top 10 across their next seven Premier League matches.
Judging on recent performances – on their growing maturity and tactical sophistication – Chelsea can put a sequence together over the festive period and emerge as Liverpool’s biggest rivals.
Since the opening-weekend defeat to Manchester City, Chelsea have won just one point fewer than Liverpool, who beat Chelsea 2-1 in October despite arguably being outplayed by Maresca’s side.
So, Chelsea are closer to Liverpool’s standard than it might seem – and they share quite a few similarities with the league leaders.
Like Liverpool with Mohamed Salah, Chelsea have a star in Cole Palmer who can win a match out of nothing.
And like Liverpool with Arne Slot, Chelsea have a tactician in Maresca who is able to blend together just the right amounts of control and disorder.
Maresca’s balanced approach
Nobody was surprised by the frenzy that was Tottenham Hotspur 3-4 Chelsea, which shows just how quickly Maresca has changed our perception of him.
Upon arrival, Maresca was billed as a Pep Guardiola-esque manager of suffocating possession football, his love of chess-inspired football at Leicester City that was too dry to be popular even as he won the Championship title.
But at Chelsea, Maresca has embraced the talents of his squad and, like Slot, found a balance between calm possession and organised chaos, allowing his players to attack quickly in the transition but retaining the ball when the game state demands a shift in momentum.
Chelsea top the charts for direct attacks (77) and for shots from fast breaks (29). They rank second for attempted through-balls (43) and are third for progressive carries (336) and successful take-ons (138).
