A week of self-inflicted scrutiny over his relationship with the club\u2019s upper management continued to simmer after Chelsea manager Enzo Maresca publicly highlighted the worth of experienced players, calling that influence \u201cinvaluable.\u201d What began with a question about Malo Gusto\u2019s form snowballed into a cryptic swipe at the \u201cworst 48 hours\u201d of his Chelsea tenure after he said he had faced a lack of support from \u201cmany people.\u201d Those comments were left unexplained and were further inflamed by reports that Manchester City consider Maresca to be a suitable replacement for Pep Guardiola, though the manager played down those rumours.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you have 20 and 21-year-olds and a player who is 30 or 31, and he starts to say something to them, it\u2019s invaluable. But it\u2019s the strategy of the club,\u201d Maresca lamented to TNT Sports before his young starting XI shipped two first-half goals. On the weekend the Blues fielded Robert S\u00e1nchez, 28, as their oldest player on the pitch. Tosin Adarabioyo, who turned 28 in September, is the oldest member of Maresca\u2019s Premier League squad, which contains 12 players aged 21 or under.<\/p>\n
Chelsea again boast the youngest squad in the Premier League, with an average age of 24.7 this season. In 2021\u201322, before the current ownership, the club ranked 15th in that metric with an average age of 27.4. Maresca described the current profile as the product of a deliberate transfer strategy focused on youth. Chelsea have not spent money on a player over the age of 25 since co-sporting directors Laurence Stewart and Paul Winstanley joined the club in 2022.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not fair to paint Maresca as distrustful of youth,\u201d he insisted himself. \u201cI love the squad, I love young players,\u201d he said earlier this week. Still, he repeated that his remit is limited. \u201cI just focus on what I can control\u2014pitch-side,\u201d he clarified, \u201cknowing that there is always noise you need to manage.\u201d After a poor first half and a stronger second-half performance he added: \u201cMy message at the end of the game is, for sure in the first half we could do better, but the character they showed in the second half should make them proud,\u201d he told assembled media. On the recent turmoil he concluded: \u201cMy last week has not been complicated. It has been good,\u201d he claimed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Maresca stresses that senior pros are ‘invaluable’ as Chelsea follows a youth-led transfer plan…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5262,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[190,172],"tags":[1162,1089,1215],"class_list":["post-5263","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-chelsea","category-epl","tag-analytics","tag-chelsea-struggles","tag-controversy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5263","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=5263"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5263\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5262"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5263"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5263"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5263"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}