Return of Chelsea first-choice front-four cannot come soon enough for Enzo Maresca

Evening Standard

·17 marzo 2025

Return of Chelsea first-choice front-four cannot come soon enough for Enzo Maresca

Cole Palmer, Noni Madueke and Nicolas Jackson comebacks feel key to Champions League hopes

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It is not unusual to raise an eyebrow at a manager’s assessment of his own team: of how well they played at times in a 4-0 defeat, about how unlucky they were not have scored at least three of their own.

Seldom, though, does a boosterist comment about the opposition prompt as much of a double-take as Mikel Arteta’s on Chelsea did here.

“In my opinion, they are the best attacking team in the league,” the Arsenal manager said following his side’s 1-0 victory at the Emirates yesterday, a remark which called for clarification.

“Yes, in open play,” he confirmed. “By a mile. The stats say it and everything that I've seen, says it.”

Was Arteta here simply being mischievous, inflating Chelsea’s powers in order to do likewise to the quality of his own side’s defensive display? Or is there something about Chelsea’s attacking shape and structure that causes the kind of problems the mortal eye cannot see?

Chelsea endured a difficult afternoon at Emirates Stadium

Getty Images

On Sunday’s evidence, of the lowest xG (0.35) recorded by Chelsea during Enzo Maresca’s reign, you would have to suspect the former.

"They can open you up, they can run in transition,” Arteta went on, except this Chelsea did none of those things. “They have individual quality, any player in the defensive line can throw you in behind, they can combine on both sides.” At least the middle part of that bit was true: left-back Marc Cucurella managed the visitors’s only two shots on goal.

Whatever data and visuals Arteta’s assessment is based on surely came from the first half of the season, when Chelsea were a dynamic, counter-attacking force. Cole Palmer was rivalling Mo Salah as the division’s best player, Nicolas Jackson was among the goals and a cast of wingers were rotating freely each week, refreshed and each with their own points to prove.

Things have gone horribly stale since, only made worse yesterday by the absence of Palmer to a minor injury, even accepting the playmaker’s form in front of goal has fallen off a cliff.

Home wins over sorry Southampton and Leicester sides may have lifted some of the gloom around Chelsea’s midseason slump, but on the road their creative woes have been evident, with just three goals and no wins from seven away Premier League games over the last three months.

In truth, there have been worse afternoons in terms of attacking output than this, such as in the FA Cup defeat at Brighton in January, when Chelsea did not muster so much as a shot on goal. What felt most alarming here was the inevitability of the dud outcome, as Chelsea probed without purpose and the away end pleaded for their side to “Attack! Attack! Attack!”.

Injuries to Noni Madueke and Jackson have, as Maresca stressed again, made a “huge difference”, but the Italian was not quite telling the whole story when claiming his team was missing “the three players with most goals for us”.

Across competitions at least, Christopher Nkunku remains level with Palmer as the club’s top-scorer this season on 14 goals, and the Frenchman’s lack of any significant contribution since being parachuted into the league team is another major reason for Chelsea’s decline.

Maresca has flip-flopped on Nkunku’s best position, starting the season saying he was one of two strikers - alongside Jackson - competing for one shirt but more recently insisting he is not a “proper No9” and is at his best at No10. That he was farmed out to the left again here, even with Palmer absent, was damning. His days in blue are surely numbered.

Jadon Sancho’s Chelsea career, meanwhile, has operated in fits and starts but he, too, is now in a prolonged rut, having managed just one shot on target across competitions since Boxing Day. Myles Lewis-Skelly is, for all the thrill and swagger of his breakthrough, still a defensive novice but came through this assignment barely tested by a winger who professes still to have England aspirations.

Chelsea’s frontline is weakened, yes, but it ought not, like Arsenal’s, to be on a state-of-emergency footing. They lost here to a winning goal scored by a central midfielder playing up-front.

What has become clear over the last month or two, amid Sancho and Nkunku’s failure to fire, is what should be the makeup of Maresca’s first-choice front-four for the run-in.

Palmer is expected to be fit after the international break, as are Jackson and Madueke, meaning Pedro Neto, the pick of Chelsea’s attackers of late, can return to his usual position on the wing.

For Maresca, that formula and the home visit of Tottenham next month cannot come soon enough.