Enzo Maresca has just taken his press conference after a draw with Arsenal at Stamford Bridge.
It’s hard to know what to make of the game – neither side was very good, and a draw was a fair result. But there’s a real sense that the Gunners were there for the taking today, and we didn’t take advantage. It also compounds our frustrating record against the top teams under Maresca, something he was asked about right away.
The Chelsea manager repeated what he said in the pre-match presser – asking the journalist who questioned his team’s form about the Liverpool game a few weeks ago.
“Do you think we deserve to lose against Liverpool? No but this is football. The performance was good and that is important.”
Well, no we probably didn’t deserve that result Enzo. But… we did lose. Of course performing well matters as an indicator of future results, but 2 draws and 2 defeats in our biggest league games of the season is more than just unlucky. The coach insisted that he had been happy enough today as well:
“The team until the end was trying to win the game. I was more worried if the performance wasn’t good enough.
Chelsea still ahead of schedule, despite frustrations
Things are still going well, and his Chelsea team end the weekend in the top 3. But the sense that we could be doing so much better if we had done better in those key games still puts a slightly sour note out there.
Liverpool are 9 point ahead of us – change that loss to a win and that it’s just 3 points and we’re actually in the title race. Still there are no complaints here. We’re far ahead of where we expected to be at this stage, as Maresca himself said pre-game.