Chelsea: Enzo Maresca hopes his own Jesper Gronkjaer emerges in vital Champions League decider | OneFootball

Chelsea’s Champions League fate is in their own hands ahead of a daunting trip to the City Ground

Gronkjaer’s famous winner secured Champions League football and rapidly set in motion the chain of events that would turn the Blues from a club in danger of financial ruin into the wealthy behemoth that conquered all during Roman Abramovich’s reign.

Win and Chelsea will return to the Champions League after a two-year absence, making a success of Maresca’s debut season, opening doors in this summer’s transfer market and giving the Todd Boehly-Clearlake era perhaps its first concrete proof of progress on-field. Fail to do so, and unless unlikely favours are forthcoming elsewhere, each of those outcomes will be reversed.

Little wonder, then, that Maresca is looking for a Gronkjaer of his own.

“I think they all dream about that,” the Italian said. “To be the one that scores the goal and we finish in the Champions League.”

Jesper Gronkjaer was Chelsea’s hero on the final day of the 2002/2003 season

Getty Images

To do that, Chelsea must overcome the three main flaws that have, at various stages of the season, been the chief reason why their early title challenge could not be maintained: their inexperience, their miserable away form and the lack of a top-class centre-forward.

Whether the Blues have one of the latter on the books remains a matter of fierce debate heading into the summer transfer window, but that they do not have one available this weekend is clear, with Nicolas Jackson still suspended. Marc Guiu and Christopher Nkunku are available again, but surely will not come straight back into the side.

In Maresca’s eyes, a more clinical version of this team may already have feet up and a cigar on, Champions League football secured.

“I feel frustrated because if you see the data, we are the first or second club in creating chances,” he said.

"I think overall we did enough to finish top-four or top-five. The numbers are there, offensively and defensively. We are the third-best defence in the league, but we have the risk of not finishing in the top-four or top-five.”

This trip to the City Ground long had the look of a straight shootout for Champions League football and had Forest not blundered in drawing against relegated Leicester a fortnight ago they would have gone into it with the upper hand.

We are the third-best defence in the league, but we have the risk of not finishing in the top-four or top-five

Enzo Maresca

Instead, it is Chelsea who are burnished by having their fate exclusively in their own control. Forest, though, have home advantage, which might count almost double against a team who have won just one of their last ten away league games.

"I don't think it's a mental problem but for sure there is something that we need to improve, no doubt,” Maresca said, vowing to use the summer break to analyse his teams struggles on the road.

It will be too late by then, of course, to affect this campaign, Maresca instead needing the Premier League’s youngest squad to come through what he accepts is, for some, the biggest game of their careers. He acknowledged, too, that Chelsea’s players will be under greater pressure to seal the deal than Forest’s overachievers.

All, though, have the same chance to join Gronkjaer as a final day hero.