Enzo Maresca conceded he felt a clear regret after Chelsea’s defeat at Leeds United, saying he should have started teenager Josh Acheampong.<\/p>\n
For the trip to West Yorkshire Maresca named five changes from the side that drew with Arsenal the previous weekend, one of them enforced by Mois\u00e9s Caicedo’s suspension. Acheampong, 19, had not featured in a Premier League match since he started the defeat to Sunderland on Oct. 25. He was on the bench at Leeds but the manager said hindsight made the decision plain.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne of the regrets I have after the game is I didn\u2019t play with Josh,\u201d the boss said.<\/p>\n
Maesca explained the rationale behind his defensive selection, pointing to a specific tactical reading of Leeds’ attack.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo the reason why we played with Trev [Chalobah], Tosin and Beno\u00eet [Badiashile] is because analysing them, we saw that most of the time they were playing long ball for [Dominic] Calvert-Lewin, for [Lukas] Nmecha. And so we prefer physicality to win aerial duels. But even with that, we lost most of them.\u201d<\/p>\n
Asked whether leadership or experience was the issue, Maresca defended the squad while underlining collective shortcomings.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not [a lack of leadership].\u00a0I love a young squad, I love young players and I\u2019m delighted with the players I have,\u201d Maresca responded when asked to decipher the reasons behind the Leeds result.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was very surprised about the performance, no doubt, because I expect more in general, in all the aspects,\u201d he explained.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut when we prepared the game, we analysed all the small details, we were aware about the Arsenal game, to play with 10 players for one hour, making some rotation because we need to protect players. We were ready in some moments, but not for the entire game.<\/p>\n
Maesca also referenced the wider context of availability and experience in his post-match remarks.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe always talk about experience when we drop points. When we beat Barcelona, we drew against Arsenal, no one was mentioning about experienced players,\u201d Maresca highlighted.<\/p>\n
\u201cI understand that when we don\u2019t win, we are always looking for the reason why, but I think the reason why we didn\u2019t win against Leeds is not because of the experience, it\u2019s because we were not good enough.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have experienced players. Unfortunately, they were not on the pitch. [Mois\u00e9s Caicedo] because he was suspended, [Reece James] because of injury. So, it\u2019s because in that moment, the ones that have more experience, they were out. Who is the oldest one for us in the pitch? Tosin. Did he play good? So, it\u2019s not about experience. It\u2019s about that 11 players, they were not good enough. ]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Maresca admitted he regretted not starting Josh Acheampong and blamed poor team performance at Leeds<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4902,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[190,172],"tags":[1129,1140],"class_list":["post-4903","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-chelsea","category-epl","tag-benoit-badiashile","tag-caicedo"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4903","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=4903"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4903\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4902"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4903"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4903"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4903"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}