Enzo Maresca\u2019s Chelsea have suffered an unusually high number of dismissals at the start of the 2025-26 season. The Blues have seen red cards in consecutive Premier League matches, Jo\u00e3o Pedro picked up two bookings on Tuesday night, and Chelsea have been reduced to ten men in three of their previous four outings.<\/p>\n
Last season Chelsea received just one Premier League red card, in May, when Nicolas Jackson was sent off for elbowing Newcastle United\u2019s Sven Botman. Jackson also received a red card in the Club World Cup against Flamengo.<\/p>\n
In attempting to explain the recent run, Maresca said: \u201cThe\u00a0Newcastle \u00a0and Flamengo red cards [earned by Nicolas Jackson last season] were for bad actions, then S\u00e1nchez [vs Man Utd] is not for a bad action, it\u2019s just because he wants to defend the goal, Chalobah [vs Brighton] is because he wants to defend the goal,\u201d Maresca said.<\/p>\n
He added: \u201cFor me personally, it\u2019s not any concern or issue, it\u2019s just a moment probably you need to take a different option and avoid. Sometimes it\u2019s better to concede the goal or the chance because then it\u2019s 11 vs. 11.\u201d<\/p>\n
Maresca is not a coach who promotes aggression; his focus is clearly on positional principles rather than provoking contact. Jo\u00e3o Pedro\u2019s two yellow cards are described as isolated incidents. S\u00e1nchez and Chalobah were both dismissed for denying goalscoring opportunities when opponents broke in behind the Chelsea defence, but the circumstances differ.<\/p>\n
Tosin Adarabioyo was beaten in the air by Benjamin \u0160e\u0161ko, which allowed Bryan Mbeumo to break through and be fouled by the retreating Chelsea goalkeeper, late to arrive after \u0160e\u0161ko\u2019s header. Chalobah\u2019s red against Brighton stemmed from Andrey Santos\u2019s poor touch while occupying a right centre back position; Kaoru Mitoma pounced and Chalobah caught Diego G\u00f3mez on the edge of the box.<\/p>\n
Those events point to individual errors rather than a coherent pattern. The dismissed players were attempting to stop immediate threats, and Maresca frames the sequence as a short-term issue rather than a systemic problem.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Chelsea’s early 2025-26 red card run has been costly; Maresca describes it as a momentary issue. Seen<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3462,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[190,172],"tags":[944,317,260],"class_list":["post-3463","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-chelsea","category-epl","tag-andrey-santos","tag-benjamin-sesko","tag-bryan-mbeumo"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3463","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=3463"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3463\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3462"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3463"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3463"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3463"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}