Enzo Maresca was asked to give his assessment of tonight’s game against Newcastle, and the manager put an instant positive spin on the match.
“I think it worked if we analysed the performance. If we analysed the result, it didn’t work. For 20 minutes until their goal, we were in control of the game,” the Chelsea boss said in the press conference after the game.
“In the last 10 minutes of the first-half, we had two clear cut chances but didn’t score and in the second-half, we were in control of the game.”
“We lost the goal because of 10 minutes. For the rest, we were quite good.”
Well it’s a nice spin on things. We think we were pretty poor, and that shouldn’t really be a surprise given we made eleven changes and went to a tricky stadium against motivated opposition.
We don’t need to make too much of a fuss, but we can’t pretend we were any good. Let’s be realistic, our attackers barely got into the game, the midfield was sloppy, the defenders nervy. “Quite good” is doing a lot of heavy lifting there. Not many fans wo watched would have been too happy about what they saw.
Chelsea dominate stats – but not the sensations
The stats back up Maresca’s assessment: his team had more shots, more shots on target, more possession, ore touches in the box, more corners, and drew more saves.
But the feel of the game? Not so much. Even once the home side had their second and Chelsea started to dominate possession, it always felt more likely that Newcastle were going to score on the break than Chelsea building something.
Still, it’s back to the first team this weekend, with a chance to get back into gear.
