Chelsea’s summers are almost as busy as their seasons these days – but we’re glad all of the nonsense is behind us now and we can focus on what actually matters: the football…. at least until the next international break.
With the window closed for almost a month now and even the “bomb squad” largely folded back into the main group, Enzo Maresca can get to work building a team and a system. He insisted today that he thought his group were ahead of schedule, and that he hadn’t expected progress to be so rapid.
Well, that’s probably a good thing. We had started to worry during the the car-crash performances of preseason, when we were seeing our defence sliced through with ease; and our midfield being bypassed like the passcode on an iPad of a parent whose kid wants to play a crash game.
But as always, it seems preseason was a liar, and we do look a lot better already. That’s not to say there aren’t worries – while we were unlucky to not get 3 points against Crystal Palace, we were equally lucky to beat Bournemouth a week ago. West Ham, Brighton and Nottingham Forest offer a tempting set of fixtures, but would anyone really be surprised if we struggled in any of them?
Enzo’s big upgrade in depth
We’ve moaned plenty about the unnecessary spending on players who might not end up featuring a lot – but there’s no question that the stockpiling of talent has given Maresca a huge number of options, both between games and in games.
Leaving out some regular starters from the squad list for the Europa League group stage was a clue about how seriously this staff are going to take load management, and that was just the start.
We’re now in a situation where Christopher Nkunku – a year ago the star signing set to be the hub of the team’s attacking player – wasn’t even brought on as a sub until the dying minutes of our recent win.
He will have a more important role to play as the season goes on without doubt – but the pressure is on for all these player to work their socks off to play at all, and while that can quickly turn nasty, for now it’s bringing a very positive and constructive competition to the squad.
We should be able to not just compete on all fronts – we should be able to go very deep in all the cup competitions without the bulk of our Premier League first having to play more than a handful of minutes until the business end.
