Enzo Maresca called all-staff meeting to try to inspire Chelsea players

Chelsea head coach Enzo Maresca called an all-staff meeting in the club’s canteen to impress upon his struggling side the work being done for them behind the scenes.

The team has slumped down the table following a run of two Premier League wins in nine games that has placed in jeopardy their hopes of finishing in the top four.

Maresca has appeared at a loss in recent weeks to arrest that alarming slide, most recently during two dreadful displays that led to back-to-back losses away to Brighton, who first dumped them out of the FA Cup then six days later inflected a chastening 3-0 league defeat.

The 45-year-old revealed he tried “more than a month ago” to rally his players by bringing them face to face with staff who work at the club’s Cobham training base at a morning meeting attended by around a hundred people.

“I got to bed 11 o’clock, 12 o’clock,” said Maresca. “I woke up four o’clock, five o’clock when we were I think third or fourth (in the league). I didn’t sleep more so I started to think it could be a good idea tomorrow morning to put all the people together from the building and share this message.

“I arrived here at seven o’clock, I text Kev (Kevin Campello, head of football operations) ‘everyone in the canteen at 10 o’clock’, and they were there.

“There are many people behind the scenes that work every day. I said to the players in that meeting, when I arrive here every morning at seven there are people from the kitchen cutting fruit. There are people behind you that you cannot see that are working every day to help you reach the target.

“I tried to convince them that there are people behind them working hard and we need to push all together.

“Kitchen people, groundsmen, kitmen. I asked them to push until the end because our target is to bring this club in the Champions League.”

Maresca has set his payers the target of winning each of their seven remaining homes games – all but one of which are against teams currently in the bottom half – to ensure a first Champions League qualification since 2022.

Before that Chelsea face a trip to Aston Villa on Saturday looking to leapfrog Manchester City and Bournemouth to move back into fourth.

Maresca was asked about how he has been attempting to give the players back the easy confidence they showed in climbing to second place in the league in late December.

“My duty is to bring the players in their best position, and then you need quality from them,” said Maresca.

“If you take Rory McIlroy’s caddy and say use the seven iron, and he gives him the seven iron, he will put the ball inside the hole. If (instead) he gives me the seven iron, I will put the ball 100 meters from the hole.

“Our duty is to bring the players in the best position for them. We put them there but then it’s about them. We trust them.”

Chelsea have been drawn to play Copenhagen in the last 16 of the Conference League, with the first leg to take place in the Danish capital on March 6.