Chelsea are set to hire Leicester City manager Enzo Maresca,, with Sky Sports reporting that the Blues had agreed a five-year deal for Maresca to become their manager. But are they making a mistake?
The footballing world was somewhat shocked when Mauricio Pochettino was shown the door despite a sixth-place finish, return to European football and seven wins in their last ten games.
Roman Abramovich may no longer be Chelsea owner, but the club’s history of sacking managers appears to be carrying on. Could Maresca be the next one and done manager in West London?
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A close shave
On paper, you would argue that this was an exciting appointment for Chelsea. His Leicester team won the Championship title at the first time of asking, earned 96 points and finished seven points clear of third placed Leeds United. However, there is a lot of context to this, which should have concerned Chelsea owner Todd Boehly.
Leicester beat Rotherham United 3-0 on December 23rd. That win put the Foxes six points clear of second place Ipswich Town and 13 points clear of third place Leeds. They had just one draw and three losses to their name at this point after 23 games, as opposed to Leeds’ six draws and four losses. Promotion seemed all but a certainty at this point. No one seemed worried about any potential collapse.
However, the turn of the year was far from kind to Leicester. They would lose eight times in 2024, including three in a row against Leeds, Middlesborough and Queens Park Rangers.
They would only win of their next three after this, including a 1-0 loss to Bristol City. This put them all the way down to third place and two points off top. Whilst they had a game in hand at the time, which would have seen them return to first place, this was a far cry from being 13 points clear on Christmas Day. In the end, Leicester were fortunate that the teams around them also had poor runs of form.
Leeds only won one of their last six games, including four losses. Ipswich lost once and drew three times before winning their final two games. Southampton, who went on a great run to even be in contention for the automatic spots, lost three of their last four games. Had these teams gotten some form of run together late on in the season, then Leicester may have had to go down the playoff route and all football fans know how much of a task this is.
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A failure to win over the fans
It is rare for a manager to be in charge of a team in first place but still be subject to criticism from his own fans, with the Daily Mail reporting they had “fallen out of love with him”.
Leicester fan Alex Bradley gave his thoughts on the imminent departure of Maresca.
“I would say he’s left the club in a much better place than when he found it.
“He came in when the club was in disarray and lots of players wanted out. He’s reinvigorated the likes of (Jannik) Vestergaard and got the best out of (Wilfried) Ndidi and (Harry) Winks.
"He played some great football with Ricardo mainly playing the inverted full-back role. The fans were also firmly back on side after twelve months of misery, and Enzo was largely behind that.
"Possession-based football was great to watch, but also a little frustrating at times, as plan B was never an option. Many of the fans are not too concerned about him leaving with fears we may have been a Burnley 2.0”
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Is this the right move for Maresca?
Maresca would have been hired partially due to having worked as Pep Guardiola’s assistant at Manchester City. The likes of Massimiliano Allegri, Thomas Tuchel and Jose Mourinho are available to clubs this summer, but neither Bayern Munich nor Chelsea, two teams who have won the Champions League this decade, have gone for them.
Bayern have appointed Vincent Kompany, who just got relegated from the Premier League with Burnley and the approaches from Chelsea and Manchester United for manager of newly promoted Ipswich Town Kieran McKenna. They have decided to go with the young and unproven projects, rather than proven and experienced ones
Chelsea will surely have the success at Arsenal of manager Mikel Arteta in the back of their minds, someone who was Pep’s assistant prior before he got the Gunners role in 2019.
Arteta took over with the team eight points off top four and has since then taken the club back to the Champions League, with two successive second place finishes. However, he got given time by the Arsenal board, something that is not the case at Chelsea.
Maresca will be fully aware of the club’s sacking policy. If you do not succeed straight away, you will be out of the job. Boehly has more patience than Abramovich but as Graham Potter will tell you, you are not guaranteed a job even if you have managed one of the biggest clubs in Europe.
