In the 51st minute of Chelsea’s Premier League clash with Arsenal, Noni Madueke drove into the visitors’ half in transition with a roaring Stamford Bridge at his back. He found Nicolas Jackson, who briefly sized up the possibility of taking on Gabriel before slowing his momentum, turning around and passing back to Madueke.
Jackson’s caution turned the roars from the stands to exasperated groans, but the reaction of Chelsea head coach Enzo Maresca was rather different. Lifting his hands high above his head for all to see, the Italian gave his striker an enthusiastic round of applause before turning back towards his bench.
It was a small moment in a game punctuated by bigger ones, but it underlined the fundamental difference between what others may want to see from Chelsea and the way Maresca wants his team to play. This difference was thrown into even starker relief in last month’s 2-1 victory over Newcastle at Stamford Bridge.
Asked in his post-match press conference why he could be seen imploring his team to calm down in possession from the touchline, Maresca said: “The problem is if you attack quick, you are going to concede a quick attack and it’s not our idea, it’s not our football.
“This kind of game is a game where, before you attack, you need to make 15 or 20 passes. If you want to attack with two passes, it’s a long distance and they can recover the ball and create and cause problems.”
The irony of his comments was that both of Chelsea’s goals in the game against Newcastle were the result of quick attacks. The first was a blistering sub-10-second move from one penalty area to the other sparked by arguably the pass of the season from Cole Palmer to Pedro Neto. The second was an incisive run and fierce shot from Palmer against a scrambling Newcastle defence after Levi Colwill won the ball back with a tackle on the halfway line.
Chelsea have been good enough under Maresca to ensure they went into the November international break third in the Premier League, but how close are they to playing the version of Marescaball seen at Leicester City last season, and how much have they changed from Mauricio Pochettino’s tenure?
With the inevitable disclaimer that the 2024-25 season is still young and offers a relatively small sample size, let’s dig into the numbers…
With the ball…
The first thing that jumps out is that Chelsea under Maresca have the ball significantly less (54.5 per cent average possession) than they did under Pochettino (58.6 per cent), and the drop-off from Leicester under the Italian — albeit in the Championship — is even more stark (61.6 per cent). They are also touching the ball much less and attempting far fewer passes per 90 minutes according to fbref.com, laid out in the table below:
It would be dangerous to conclude from these figures that Maresca’s team are less effective at controlling matches; more passes, touches and possession did not prevent Pochettino’s side from registering Chelsea’s worst defensive record (63 goals conceded) of the Premier League era in 2023-24.
Despite seeing less of the ball so far this season, very little has changed in Chelsea’s attacking output from Pochettino to Maresca:
This supports the notion that Chelsea get more attacking value from their possession under Maresca. The graphic below shows that while their speed on the ball is actually down slightly from Pochettino’s tenure, they are averaging fewer passes per attacking sequence and their profile in possession is closer to Arne Slot’s high-flying Liverpool side than Manchester City under Pep Guardiola — or indeed Leicester under Maresca last season:
It is possible that this season’s data is skewed by matches against Wolves and Brighton in which Chelsea’s attack exploded against opponents who gave them plenty of space to exploit. But it is also notable that Maresca’s team have already scored four goals from what Opta defines as a ‘fast break’ — an attempt created after a team quickly turn defence into attack, winning the ball in their own half (counter-attack). They scored one in the entirety of 2023-24.
The process of how Chelsea attack has changed considerably under Maresca. Much of it is easy to see: one full-back (usually Malo Gusto) inverts either into the base of midfield or, more recently, into the left or right ‘pocket’ with Palmer operating in the other. Last season, Pochettino’s team took 41 per cent of their attacking touches in the right third but with their talisman starting more centrally, that is down to just over 33 per cent.
There is more balance in how Chelsea enter the penalty area under Maresca, though they are still reliant on Palmer’s passing vision and Madueke’s dribbling ability on the right. His aggressive wing play, coupled with more underlapping runs, has contributed to a rise in cutback chances: Chelsea are now creating 0.26 expected goals (xG) from these situations per game, up from 0.18 in Pochettino’s season.
Chelsea fans were primed to expect slow, patient possession football from Maresca based on his season at Leicester. The reality so far this season has been far more fluid and nuanced. While he clearly wants his players to slow down at times, in a press conference earlier this month the Italian said he will continue to vary his approach depending on the opponent.
“It’s not about playing slow or playing fast,” he insisted. “(In) the Brighton game, we attacked quick because the space was in between (their defensive line and goalkeeper). We didn’t plan the same game against Nottingham Forest, when they sit back.”
Without the ball…
Chelsea under Maresca are on pace to concede 45 goals in the Premier League this season — not the record of an elite defence, but one that would represent a marked improvement on the ghastly 63 goals shipped by Pochettino’s team in 2023-24.
Yet the underlying data suggests the defensive gains have been more marginal. Despite giving up two fewer shots per 90 minutes this season compared to last (12.5, down from 14.5), Chelsea’s expected goals conceded has only reduced from 1.4 per 90 minutes under Pochettino to 1.2 per 90 minutes under Maresca, and remains some way short of the 0.9 per 90 minutes registered by Leicester in the Championship last season.
The early evidence indicates that Chelsea are also pressing less aggressively under Maresca than they did under Pochettino. Premier League opponents are averaging 12.1 passes per defensive action (essentially, before a tackle or interception is made) against Chelsea in 2024-25, a notable rise from 10.7 under Pochettino last season. Leicester under Maresca allowed 11.1 passes per defensive action.
Chelsea’s ball recoveries in the attacking third are also marginally down from 5.7 per 90 minutes under Pochettino to 4.9 per 90 minutes under Maresca, though this could even out across a full season. Devoting fewer resources to hunting the ball high up the pitch can have some defensive benefits; opponent shots conceded from fast breaks are also slightly down from 0.55 per 90 minutes last season to 0.45 this season.
Maresca’s big structural change, pushing a full-back into midfield, does in theory make Chelsea better equipped to defend transition situations through the middle of the pitch — though his recent admission that Romeo Lavia is required alongside Moises Caicedo to provide adequate “physicality” underlines that he is still searching for a perfect solution to balance his team.
Many of the other defensive numbers are relatively similar, though Chelsea under Maresca are proving slightly more effective with their tackles and interceptions:
One notable early trend is that Chelsea are catching opponents offside much more under Maresca than they did under Pochettino (3.0 offsides per 90 minutes, up from 1.8 last season). This could indicate some benefits of the ‘Pellegrini offside trap’ brilliantly observed and explained by Michael Cox in The Athletic earlier this month, though several goals have also been conceded due to failures in its execution.
One unwelcome constant for Maresca to address is that Chelsea are on course to break the record they set last season for yellow cards in a Premier League season, having received 42 — five more than any other Premier League club — in their 11 matches.
This is despite only ranking in the middle of the pack for fouls per 90 minutes (11.5), which is almost identical to last season under Pochettino. Leicester had no such issues under Maresca, which suggests the indiscipline issue is specific to this group of Chelsea players. Dissent, a point of emphasis for Premier League officials, has been a persistent problem.
One of Maresca’s favourite phrases at Chelsea is “we have many things we can do better”. Like most modern coaches, he is process-driven and wastes no opportunity to point out how little time he has had to work with this young group of players compared to many of his rivals near the top of the Premier League.
Beyond the inverting full-back becoming a regular feature, Chelsea do not hugely resemble last season’s Championship-winning Leicester side. Nor are they entirely unrecognisable from Pochettino’s team — and that is not necessarily a bad thing, particularly when it comes to how incisive they can be in attack.
Maresca’s challenge in the weeks and months ahead is not just to find the balance between attack and defence, but also to find the balance between the control he craves and the creation that can be provided by Palmer and others when matches are in a state of chaos.
That journey will not be without its setbacks, but Chelsea will be hoping it continues to garner enough points to keep them near the head of the Premier League top-four chase.
(Top photo: Ed Sykes/Getty Images)
