Jadon Sancho against Pedro Neto for a spot on Chelsea’s left wing is developing into quite the interesting battle this season.
We’ve already seen the baton handed back and forth a couple of times – Neto became Enzo Maresca’s instant starter after signing, but Sancho arrived later in the summer and won his place back.
Then, as of last week, following a disappointingly unproductive couple of weeks for Sancho, Neto was back in. And the winger did really well against Newcastle on Sunday, as they noted on the London is Blue podcast this week.
Their guest CFCSam picked out some of the Portugal winger’s best moments and explained what he was adding to the team which Sancho had lacked.
You can see them discussing Chelsea in the clip embedded here, with these quotes coming after 6 minutes:
Neto and James provide Newcastle a tough challenge on the left
The use of Reece James on the left hand side on Sunday also changed the equation, with he and Malo Gusto switching sides at full back compared to the week before.
“Neto was so good on the left hand side, because he receives the ball outside, most of the time he waited and brought in other players… I think the Sancho switch to Neto and making sure Reece was deeper was a good change.”
The dynamic of having a number of different left wingers to choose from, plus a number of different options at left back (we’ve seen Gusto, James, Marc Cucurella and Renato Veiga all start there this season) is adding a whole new dimension to this side and allowing Maresca to be really creative with his selections.
As time goes by, we expect him to dream up really interesting tactical matchups for opposition teams on a game by game basis.
