Should Chelsea judge Enzo Maresca on trophies won this season?
Enzo Maresca was named the Chelsea manager in the summer in a surprise twist, and he earned the job despite lacking managerial experience in any top flight.
The Blues interviewed him and several other managers after deciding to sack Mauricio Pochettino, who had done a good job for them.
We questioned his appointment because he lacks experience for a team that wants to return to the top of English football.
Chelsea’s current owners have looked clueless about operating a successful football club in Europe, having come to London from the USA.
Some of their decisions have been shocking, and they have made many mistakes which could have made the team one of the relegation battlers.
Poch did a great job on their bench last season, and he deserved to remain the team’s manager for another year, but the Blues sacked him and named Maresca.
The Italian embraced the challenge and did brilliantly to find a solution to their bloated squad, solving a problem we thought he had been set up to fail.
Regardless of where Chelsea finishes this season, Maresca deserves his flowers for fixing that big mess he met in London.
However, the team would inevitably ask for more. No one cares about the state of the club when he became its manager, as soon as he started his tenure, they expect him to win trophies.
Maresca also set himself up for fans to demand more from him and his team when they got close to the top of the Premier League table, and there was talk of them winning the league.
The Blues reached the second spot, overtaking Arsenal and standing behind Liverpool for a few weeks.
What happened to Chelsea’s title ambitions?
When Chelsea reached the second place in the Premier League table, it felt like they had snuck in out of nowhere.
Even the strongest supporters who buy Chelsea tickets did not think at the beginning of this season that their team would win the league crown.
When they came within points of the top spot, they began to dream about their team emerging as champions of England.
However, it did not last long as they struggled with the pressure of the title race and are now fighting to finish inside the top four.
To his credit, Maresca always downplayed their chance of winning the title and insisted his team was not ready to be champions.
They had overachieved in those weeks and have found their level, but fans will not accept their inconsistent run for a long time.
It is almost impossible for them to win the Premier League this season, but Maresca’s team must stop their current downward slide before it is too late to return to the Champions League places.
Has Maresca met expectations?
When Maresca arrived at Stamford Bridge, Chelsea was a mess because of the number of players the club had signed.
Almost all of them were top players they had spent a lot of money to add to their squad, so he had to make bold decisions on his selection while ensuring his team did well.
One of the bold decisions that the Italian made was to make some big-name stars who did not fit his demands available for transfer.
He made the likes of Raheem Sterling and Ben Chilwell redundant as soon as he became the manager, which was a risky decision.
When he chose the players he wanted to keep, the team looked very young, but most fans questioned if it could compete.
That decision paid off as his team nearly topped the Premier League table, as we discussed earlier, showing that he had the guts to make bold calls.
Maresca also ensured the team no longer relies on Cole Palmer the way it did in the last campaign when the Englishman scored most of their goals.
This has helped take the burden off the former Manchester City star, and Chelsea is now a good team.
One of the big tasks any Chelsea manager had to do was to fix the squad mess, and Maresca did so, so we can say he met expectations at the club.
How has not building around Cole Palmer helped
Palmer is a terrific player, and he can be as reliable as any top-quality footballer in the world, which explains why Pochettino relied so much on him.
He delivered, and because he was rarely injured, Chelsea reaped so many fruits from having him on their squad.
The Englishman happily helped the team, but Maresca knew it was dangerous to rely on him alone and has developed a more rounded team.
Overall, Chelsea now has more players who can score and make a difference, but they probably would have done better if Palmer continued to score as he did last season.
In the long run, they will benefit from not relying too much on Palmer, but that decision remains questionable if you ask most Chelsea supporters.
They just want to see their team win and do not care if it is one player who scores all the goals. When Palmer was on fire last season, they also had one player to brag about when rival fans discussed Mohamed Salah or Erling Haaland.
Because Palmer is now more of a team player, no one has stood out in the current Chelsea team.
Will a top-four finish be good enough for Chelsea?
Although there are some limitations in the current Chelsea team, the club’s owners still expect to see some progress from last term.
Poch led them to finish inside the top six, which is why they qualified for the Europa Conference League.
However, that was not good enough for their ambitious owners, so Maresca knows he needs to end this season well.
Liverpool is almost certain to win the Premier League title this season, so Chelsea can forget about winning that trophy.
However, the Blues are in the running for the FA Cup and can also win the Conference League, which they have done so well in this term.
A top-four finish at the end of this term should be good enough for Maresca’s first season as their manager, and if he can get his hands on a trophy on top of that, then it would be even better.
The Blues know how tough the job is, and it makes no sense for them to keep changing managers, so if Maresca secures a return to Champions League football at the end of this campaign, he would have ended his first full season as their manager in a good position.