John Terry has spoken people, and like all of us, as a diehard Chelsea fan first and foremost, the captain, leader, and legend, is FUMING!
Why this man is still not involved in the first team squad in some capacity is beyond me. You need people in there who ‘get it’, especially for games like away at Leeds United that is covered in deep history that only people like Terry truly know about.
The Chelsea academy staff member reacted after our 3-1 defeat to Leeds last night. He said:
“What a poor performance that was.
“Everything I said about Leeds, they were going to be aggressive, fans were going to be up for it, it was going to be a hostile place to go. You either go there and match them or you take the sting out of it completely, and by looks of it we certainly didn’t do that in the first half.
“We cannot follow up two unbelievable performances with a performance like that, it’s certainly not going to make you title contenders.
“Unfortunately that’s what’s going to cost us, we are inexperienced and if you can’t go Leeds away and know what to expect then…
“You need to go there and show the fight, match Leeds in every single way and then earn your right to play. After 15, 20 minutes you play your football once you’ve EARNED that right.
“Set piece, individual mistakes defensively, clearly not good enough, maybe that’s an opportunity for the manager to look at the squad and go ‘okay rotations not for me moving forward, I know my best 11-14 players and I’ll stick with that and the other players are just going to have to deal with it.”
Everything he’s said here is SPOT ON, especially that last sentence. But it’s clear the rotation policy is coming from above Enzo Maresca, they have pretty much even briefed that. They need all their players to be playing as much as possible to keep values up so they can continue the ‘just sell for profit if they’re not good enough’ policy.
I understand that we do have to have an element of rotation. But when you pretty much field an entire second string, a second string that are just not good enough for the Premier League, then that is where you’re making your BIG mistakes – that bit IS on Maresca, even if the club are telling him to rotate. I also do think that Maresca WANTS to rotate too, by the way, he’s said it many times.
Terry rightly mentions the inexperience again, and yep, bang that drum. They should have ALL known exactly what to expect at Leeds last night but instead of rising to the occasion, they dug holes and hid like moles.
And finally, this bit – ‘We cannot follow up two unbelievable performances with a performance like that.’
I truly hope Maresca said the same in the dressing room after the game. But he also needs to take a lot of the blame here too. He picks the teams, lays out the tactics, and is the one supposed to be getting the players up for games like this.
