Two days after suffering the second of back-to-back away defeats against Brighton & Hove Albion, a group of Chelsea’s senior players initiated a team meeting at Cobham.
While producing what head coach Enzo Maresca subsequently described as “the worst performance” of his tenure in the 3-0 reverse at the Amex Stadium, Chelsea’s body language on the pitch was every bit as alarming as their play. Team-mates openly argued with each other after misplaced passes or missed chances. A noticeable drop in intensity with and without the ball. Meek acceptance in a dire second half that another defeat was coming.
The result — Chelsea’s fourth Premier League loss in nine games — dropped them below Manchester City and Bournemouth to sixth in the Premier League table. Maresca’s team were in freefall and hopes of Champions League qualification, the primary objective of the season, were in danger of slipping away. An intervention was needed.
In the meeting — according to numerous sources who, as with everyone consulted for this article, spoke anonymously to The Athletic to protect relationships — frank words were exchanged. Some of the key points made were that standards in training needed to improve, the players needed to be more serious and together, and that individual egos and ambitions must be set aside for the good of the team.
Coming out of the meeting, the consensus was very positive, that honest conversation had been highly productive in terms of clearing the air.
Some in the squad had harboured concerns about the level of leadership shown during the bad run, but the day after the meeting, club captain Reece James and others in the leadership group in the Chelsea squad — which is fluid around the edges but includes at its core Enzo Fernandez, Moises Caicedo, Levi Colwill, “Uncle” Tosin Adarabioyo and third-choice goalkeeper Marcus Bettinelli, a popular player in the dressing room — arranged a team meal in a further attempt to bring the players closer together.
Results do not always provide immediate validation. Chelsea lost again on their next Premier League outing against Aston Villa, but while the pattern of the game was similar to some of their other defeats over the previous two months, the vibe was very different. Maresca’s team started brightly, took the lead and remained competitive after the home side equalised, missing chances to win before being undone in the 89th minute when goalkeeper Filip Jorgensen allowed Marco Asensio’s shot to squirm underneath him.
TV footage captured Fernandez fighting back tears as he apologised to the Chelsea away support. Back in the dressing room, some of his team-mates were lying on the floor in exhaustion. James volunteered himself to front up and field questions from the media — another notable sign that he is growing into his captaincy and responding to the public challenge Maresca issued in October for him to show more leadership within the squad.
As club captain, James has had to step up in times of trouble (Alex Pantling/Getty Images)
Chelsea finally got the win they had been searching for at home against Southampton on Tuesday. Anything less would have deepened the sense of crisis, given that their opponents might finish this season as the worst team of the Premier League era. But the manner in which victory was achieved — overcoming some early nerves amplified by the unease emanating from the Stamford Bridge stands, keeping a clean sheet and scoring four goals, with Christopher Nkunku and Pedro Neto stepping up on a rare off-day in the final third for Cole Palmer — felt cathartic.
“I just said to the players that probably we are in our worst moment in terms of results, but we are fourth, one point from the third, and we are in our worst moment,” Maresca said in his post-match press conference. “So that means a lot, and also shows how good we have been in the first part of the season. Now it’s just a matter of trying to finish in the best way.”
There are no indications that Maresca’s standing in the dressing room has been damaged by Chelsea’s bad run. He is held in high regard by many players for the quality of his training sessions and his attention to tactical details. While the broad structure of his system has remained consistent this season, he has also garnered credit for his flexibility in making tweaks to individual player roles and positioning from game to game.
Ahead of the Villa game Maresca abandoned the failed experiment of deploying Nkunku and Palmer as dual false nines, instead moving Neto up front to exploit the spaces behind Unai Emery’s defensive line and also springing a surprise by picking James alongside Caicedo at the base of midfield. “We worked hard all week on analysing Villa and where we could exploit them, and I think we created many chances in the first half,” Chelsea’s captain said afterwards.
That approach evolved again with a reshuffle for the Southampton game. James moved to the bench, Fernandez dropped deeper alongside Caicedo and Jadon Sancho started on the right flank to allow Palmer to operate as a central creator behind Neto, with Nkunku on the left.
Maresca has had no choice but to get creative in recent weeks, with Chelsea’s squad heavily depleted by injuries to several key players and by the January departures of Joao Felix, Renato Veiga and Axel Disasi, who all pushed for loan moves in search of more regular game time.
Some sources question whether Maresca might have managed certain situations better, pointing out that none of Chelsea’s rivals in the upper reaches of the Premier League faced as many cases of players angling to leave in the winter. In addition to the three first-team players who departed, Nkunku and Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall also struggled with the frequency of their opportunities in the first half of the campaign before ultimately sticking around.
Nkunku is getting a run of games (Justin Setterfield/Getty Images)
The perception lingered among some of an A team and a B team within the squad — something Maresca denied on the record in a press conference in November. “The reason why we make changes is not because we are the ‘A team’ or the ‘B team’: we are all one team,” he said.
“The only reason is because they all deserve to play. Some of them are playing Premier League games, some of them in the Conference League or Carabao Cup. But in one game or two games, it can change; the ones playing Carabao and Conference games can then play in the Premier League. We have 24 or 25 outfield players, and there is only one team, only one squad. What we try to do is to share minutes with all of them.”
It is also fair to point out that footballers being dissatisfied with their game time is a universal reality of squad management at the top level.
“We have 25 players that all want to play but it is not possible,” Maresca said in a press conference ahead of Chelsea’s 2-2 draw with Bournemouth last month. “Our target is to, first of all, do the best for the club and the team — that means trying to win games. Also, if we can keep players happy, then we are happy. But that is not the reality. The players are happy just if they play and if they don’t play, then they are not happy.”
The problem appears to have been particularly acute at Chelsea last month, given that Maresca publicly described the noise around certain players in January as “a disaster” for maintaining the focus of his squad. Perhaps not coincidentally, it was also around this time that he took the step of addressing his players in front of all of the assembled support staff at Cobham.
“‘When I arrive here at 7am, there are people from the kitchen cutting the fruit in the same way: cut, cut, cut, cut,’” Maresca revealed last week that he told his players. “‘There are people behind (you) who you cannot see, who are working every day to help you to reach your target (of qualifying for the Champions League).’”
Injuries are regarded internally as being the most significant contributing factor to Chelsea’s recent struggles.
Wesley Fofana, Romeo Lavia, Nicolas Jackson and Noni Madueke are all picked regularly in the Premier League by Maresca when fit and have featured prominently in some of the team’s most impressive performances. Trevoh Chalobah was playing the meaningful role he had been promised on his recall from loan at Crystal Palace before being forced off with an impact injury in the eighth minute against Villa.
Other frequent starters not technically on the injured list have been playing with minor physical issues, which is not unusual at this point in a long campaign.
Unlike last season under Mauricio Pochettino, when the relatively high number of injuries players suffered in training sparked concern, most of Chelsea’s recent problems have occurred during matches and are more readily attributable to bad luck, or standard wear and tear. But that does not change the fact that certain absences have fundamentally altered the balance of Maresca’s team.
It is not just that Chelsea are missing some of their better players. Relationships have been disrupted all over the pitch. Colwill has not had a consistent centre-back partner since Fofana was sidelined in the 3-0 win against Villa at Stamford Bridge at the start of December. Lavia’s absence has increased the burden on Caicedo and often required Fernandez to play in a deeper role, where he can combine less frequently with Palmer. The struggles of Chelsea’s best player, too, cannot be separated from losing Jackson and Madueke, the two attackers with whom he shares the most productive chemistry in the final third.
Palmer’s recent dip in form is a concern for Maresca and Chelsea (Julian Finney/Getty Images)
That situation is beginning to ease. Fofana was back in the squad for the Southampton win and could feature when his former club Leicester City visit Stamford Bridge on March 9. Lavia is also nearing a return. Jackson and Madueke are projected to be sidelined until after next month’s international break, making it more important that Nkunku and Neto build on their improving form and Palmer re-discovers his best rhythm.
Chelsea have the rare luxury of time to prepare — mentally, physically and tactically — for the four matches they must navigate across the Premier League and Conference League before then, culminating in a trip to face Arsenal at the Emirates Stadium on March 16 that will provide a true test of their efforts to build fresh momentum heading into the season’s final stretch.
Adversity is part of elite sport, and fighting through it is a non-negotiable part of any team’s journey towards success. On numerous occasions in the last two months, Maresca has insisted, not always entirely convincingly, that living these moments will make his young Chelsea squad better in the long run. Some around the squad believe it to be less about experience and more about seasoning: the process of growing together in the bad times as well as the good.
The time for Chelsea to show that process is working is fast approaching, against far more daunting opponents than Championship-bound Southampton. But the will is there, and Maresca spoke for more than just himself when he responded to a question about the supporter protest that took place outside Stamford Bridge ahead of Tuesday’s game.
“The only thing I can say is that in this moment I think the fans have to trust (the club), because we are in the right process, we are in the right direction,” he said. “I said many times that since we started I think we have been in the top four most games of the season, so that means that we are in the right direction, the club is in the right direction.
“Especially I think they have to trust the players, because the players are doing a huge effort every day to bring this club where it has to be, that is in the Champions League.”
(Top photos: Getty Images)
