Chelsea manager Enzo Maresca rejected criticism of his team choices following Saturday\u2019s 1-1 draw with Brentford, insisting his decisions were governed by the match at hand. Chelsea trailed 1-0 at half-time, and Maresca made several changes which briefly appeared to spark a comeback before F\u00e1bio Carvalho tapped home at the back post deep into stoppage time to salvage a draw.<\/p>\n
Facing questions about squad management, Maresca grounded his thinking in the current season\u2019s objectives. \u201cOur focus was about tonight and the reason why is because this season we play Champions League, because we did well in the Premier League,\u201d Maresca explained. \u201cIf we want to play again in the Champions League next season, we need to do well in the Premier League.\u201d<\/p>\n
The selection debate extended to the striking options. Marc Guiu, described by Maresca as Chelsea\u2019s only natural striker in the absence of Liam Delap, did not make the bench to provide cover for Jo\u00e3o Pedro, who had raised a fitness concern before kick-off. \u201cJo\u00e3o Pedro before the game asked me, that he was not fit 100% and that it was better that he doesn\u2019t play,\u201d Maresca revealed. \u201cSo if I was thinking about Bayern Munich, then Jo\u00e3o would be on the bench.<\/p>\n
\u201cJo\u00e3o played because the focus was on tonight. But for sure when you have so many games you have to plan different options.<\/p>\n
\u201cMarc is a striker and we know him from last year but in this moment we needed to leave one of them out of the squad. I also wanted to give Ty [George] a little bit of confidence. He did quite well vs. Fulham and was OK today.\u201d<\/p>\n
The immediate priority for supporters will be a swift response on the pitch. Wednesday\u2019s trip to Munich could bring about a reunion with the on-loan Nicolas Jackson, and the narrow draw at Brentford leaves questions over selection as Chelsea prepare for that Champions League test.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Maresca defended his selection after Carvalho’s stoppage-time finish rescued a draw for Chelsea. Sat.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2785,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[728,190],"tags":[934,1009,1008],"class_list":["post-2786","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-brentford","category-chelsea","tag-enzo-maresca","tag-fabio-carvalho","tag-joao-pedro-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2786","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2786"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2786\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2785"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2786"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2786"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2786"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}