Enzo Maresca has acknowledged a recurring problem at Chelsea: the team repeatedly surrenders control after taking the lead, and he says it is not a random pattern. Speaking after the defeat to Aston Villa, Maresca insisted the club must identify the underlying cause quickly as they prepare to face Bournemouth on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
Fans have offered several explanations for the trend. Maresca\u2019s substitutions have been questioned and the Italian has suggested the lack of experience in a young squad could be a factor. He was candid about the difficulty of diagnosing the issue during his post-match press conference immediately after the Aston Villa defeat. \u201cI don\u2019t know [whether experience would help], it\u2019s just a matter to understand the reason why, because I don’t think it\u2019s random,\u201d he said. \u201cWhen something continues to happen, it\u2019s not random.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo we need to understand why, no matter if we are winning, drawing or losing, we concede a goal, we lose a little bit of control. So we need to understand the reason why.\u201d<\/p>\n
The loss to Villa left Chelsea fifth in the Premier League table on 29 points. While that position is likely to be sufficient for Champions League qualification, it is also precarious: Chelsea sit ahead of Manchester United only on goal difference, are three points clear of Fulham in 10th, and just nine points above 16th-placed Leeds United, who have 20 points. The margin for error is slim.<\/p>\n
This run represents a sharp downturn for a side that, after a 1\u20131 draw with Arsenal in late November, had briefly been discussed as potential title challengers. Chelsea now trail Mikel Arteta\u2019s leaders by 13 points.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn this moment [Champions League qualification] is the target,\u201d Maresca said. He added perspective on the Villa defeat: \u201cI think tonight\u2019s game [against Villa] doesn\u2019t reflect the 10 points difference between us and Villa, to be honest. So we need to be confident and we need to think that hopefully we can go close again to the ones that are ahead of us.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Maresca admits Chelsea’s recurrent loss of control after conceding leads needs urgent analysis ….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5513,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[190,172],"tags":[1305,1089,1307],"class_list":["post-5514","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-chelsea","category-epl","tag-bench-selection","tag-chelsea-struggles","tag-collapse"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5514","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=5514"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5514\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5513"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5514"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5514"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5514"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}