Jamie Carragher really does rate Enzo Maresca as a head coach, and he has done for quite a while.
Whilst he will often criticise Chelsea’s project and recruitment, he has always backed the coaching abilities of Maresca, and he continues to do so.
He’s put him up there now with Pep Guardiola, with his latest analysis on Sky Sports this week.
Carragher praised Chelsea’s possession play versus Spurs from the weekend.
“I’ll tell you a manager who can coach this, and that is Enzo Maresca. We’ve seen this a lot from Chelsea since he came in, it’s nothing new,” Carragher said.
“What you see in terms of rotations is: you’ve got a central midfield player in Reece James, now part of a back three in the middle there, splitting the centre backs.
“You’ve got your right back, at times you see it with the left back – Cucurella. He’s taking up almost right sided attacking midfield positions. And you’ve got Enzo Fernandez, who spent a lot of time in the game in this role, at times pulling wide, but also at times he was pulling wide, but he was also pulling Palhinha onto the last line.”
“Now what happens: the ball comes in to Joao Pedro, and what you’ve got now is, that’s your centre forward, and your right back is your highest player on the attacking line.
“So when you talk about rotations, this is what the managers at the really top level can do. Pep Guardiola, Arne Slot, Mikel Arteta, Enzo Maresca. They can coach the rotations and the movements.”
There was certainly a lot to praise Maresca for in this victory. But one thing that also stood out was how much better they defended set-pieces and throw-ins, something they have struggled with lately.
It’s been said that they trained all week working on this, allowing ways for Robert Sanchez to be able to come and claim things more comfortably. It certainly worked well in this game.
These are the little things that can genuinely make a difference in games, and this is some decent analysis from Carragher.
