Chelsea manager Enzo Maresca moved to defend Manchester United counterpart Ruben Amorim ahead of their upcoming meeting, saying that a period of poor form can be expected when a coach adjusts to a new league. Maresca will occupy the away dugout for Chelsea and was at one stage considered by the Red Devils as a possible replacement for Erik ten Hag.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think Manchester United is a big club, they have a big manager and no doubt that they are going to do important things with Ruben,\u201d he said. He added perspective on Amorim\u2019s transition: \u201cThe only thing I can say is that I really appreciate Ruben. I\u2019ve watched Ruben\u2019s games since he was in Sporting. He\u2019s a magnificent manager. Like all the managers, when you start a new project, sometimes you can struggle a little bit more or a little bit less, but at the end, you\u2019re going to struggle. I don\u2019t have any doubt that he\u2019s a fantastic manager.\u201d<\/p>\n
Maesca emphasised his own commitment to Chelsea in the same press conference. \u201cI am Chelsea manager, happy to be here,\u201d Maresca continued. \u201cIn the moment that Chelsea [contacted] me for the first time, I said already many times, I was immediately convinced and sure.<\/p>\n
\u201cFirst of all, because of the club, how big it is and then because of the squad, because the squad for me last year was very good, and this season it\u2019s also very good.\u201d<\/p>\n
Chelsea will try to respond to their midweek defeat to Bayern Munich in the Champions League by targeting United in the league fixture. The game presents a test for Amorim\u2019s side, who have a reputation for producing strong performances in bigger matches. Maresca\u2019s remarks framed the contest as more than a tactical battle: they are a reminder that adaptation takes time and that context matters when judging a new manager\u2019s early run of results.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Enzo Maresca says Ruben Amorim will face certain early struggles while adapting to English football.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2940,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[190,179,969],"tags":[1021,1047],"class_list":["post-2941","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-chelsea","category-manchester-united","category-premier-league","tag-amorim","tag-champions-league"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2941","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=2941"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2941\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2940"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2941"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2941"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2941"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}