Chelsea head coach Enzo Maresca said he is “more sure” than ever that his side are on the right track despite their chastening slump down the Premier League table.
Tuesday’s meeting with Southampton at Stamford Bridge sees them seeking just a third league win in 11 matches that would, for 24 hours at least, hoist them back into the top four and give the 45-year-old room to breathe.
The manner of Chelsea’s last three defeats has been particularly dispiriting. Brighton beat them twice in the space of six days, performances that stood out as some of the worst of what is threatening to turn into another indifferent campaign, before they chucked away a half-time lead to lose to Aston Villa on Saturday.
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It continued a trend of letting points slip from winning positions – the tally now stands at 15 points for the season, 13 of which have been lost since Boxing Day, while Brighton also came from behind to knock them out of the FA Cup.
Chelsea have struggled for goals with leading scorer Cole Palmer not having netted since January 14 and on a run of 13 games without an assist, and with Maresca’s only two strikers – Nicolas Jackson and Marc Guiu – out until April, solutions do not appear to be at hand.
Nevertheless, he was upbeat ahead of the visit of the league’s bottom side and insisted his ideas are working.
“Now I am even more sure (than when) we started,” said Maresca. “I don’t have any doubt about the idea. The problem is in general people judge the idea because of the results.
“If I ask you one month ago if you are happy with the idea when we were winning every game and we were second, probably everyone would have said yes.
“Now that we drop points, we are seventh, people have doubts about the idea. For me I feel even more strong about the idea. It’s just a matter of results.”
The slump in form has placed in jeopardy Chelsea’s chances of qualifying for the Champions League for the first time since 2022.
Maresca was asked whether failing to return to Europe’s top competition could prompt players, chiefly Palmer who has scored 39 goals for the club since the start of last season, to agitate for a move away from west London.
“First of all we need to see how we finish. In case we don’t finish top four, we’ll see if Cole is happy or not,” Maresca said of the England international, who last August signed a contract extension tying him to the Blues until 2033.
“I don’t think Cole is worried in this moment about next year that he wants to play Champions League. He is just focused on how he can help the team, how we can help him.”
The head coach joked: “I think Cole signed a new contract until 2045. For sure if we finish top four and play Champions League we can convince players to come here. But players that are already here, I don’t think we need that.”
