Enzo Maresca showed his tactical flexibility ahead of the new Premier League season

Enzo Maresca’s first game at Stamford Bridge ended in a 1-1 draw between Chelsea and Inter Milan.

Being in the stadium, the response to the performance was rather mixed. There was a general feeling that it was a good, controlling performance but also that at times we were slow and played with no urgency.

This is something that will be a recurring theme throughout the season and something that fans will need to get used to.

Unlike my previous pieces, I will split this one into two sections – the Positives and Negatives of the game today. 

Positives:

• Enzo Maresca shows tactical flexibility. 

After fairly large amounts of the Leicester fanbase scaring Chelsea fans for weeks, many had come to fear that Enzo Maresca was too ‘stubborn’ in his approach and that he would never change his tactics.

Many had insisted that he would always invert a fullback no matter what. The good news is that he has already changed quite a bit. 

The man-to-man press that had everyone panicking after it was bypassed was completely ditched to a zonal press. On top of this, the whole ‘inverted fullback’ feature of Maresca’s system was dropped.

While yes, Malo Gusto did ‘invert’ he didn’t invert into the pivot next to Lavia but almost exclusively operated between the single pivot (Lavia) and the touchline winger (Madueke). This role applied to Enzo Fernandez in the first half as well.

Lavia, for the most part, acted as a single pivot with either Gusto or Enzo Fernandez dropping in beside him at points to form a double pivot. 

It was also good to see the fluidity of these rotations as illustrated below, with players taking others’ role depending on the situation.

Another interesting thing about Maresca’s tweak was our diamond midfield:

Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall would operate as the 10 and Enzo Fernandez and Gusto would form the other two midfielders ahead of Lavia, forming the diamond midfield. This is good and shows we aren’t just inverting players for the sake of it.

• Gusto and Enzo Fernandez.

Gusto playing in that position allows Madueke to hug the touchline and allow Gusto to occupy the right half-space, thus balancing the attack.

It also allows Enzo Fernandez to have an impact in the buildup and in the final third, utilising his passing range and intelligence in both phases of play. 

• Much more controlled.

Our counter press and out-of-possession shape was a lot better, leading to us getting the ball back quicker and sustaining attacks. This can be seen in our match momentum chart.

Negatives:

• Wesley Fofana:
  

Wesley Fofana is admittedly returning from an ACL injury but he definitely doesn’t look ready to start the premier league season. Positionally, he has been poor. This continued today with Fofana making the random decision to engage which consequentially led to Inter Milan’s goal. 

• Poor finishing.

We created at least four good enough chances to score. A common theme throughout pre-season has been that we created enough chances to score multiple goals during the game but we never actually converted them into goals.

This continued again into the game and meant we had to rely on a late Ugochukwu equaliser to get a draw. 

• Mykhailo Mudryk.

With another poor performance and news of Joao Felix potentially rejoining Chelsea, Mudryk’s future could possibly look to be under threat.

Mudryk consistently fails to impress, fails to take on players, and constantly loses the ball. 

Overall, Chelsea’s performance gave a good insight into the levels we can reach under Enzo Maresca. There’s still a lot of work to but with time and patience we could definitely reach some impressive levels.

Playing like we did today against the Italian Champions is certainly promising, even if it is just pre-season.