Why Enzo Maresca may not use 2 new attacking options against Man U | OneFootball

Nicolas Jackson’s red card against Newcastle last week really put his team in a lot of trouble.

Not only did his team have to get through that game with ten men, already a goal down, the resulting suspension also ruled Jackson out from their last two league games of the season.

The Blues were able to squeeze past Man U 1-0 on Friday night, but it wasn’t pretty. Tyrique George wasn’t able to make any impact at all leading the line, and there are big concerns that we could see similar issues against a very physical and defensively strong Nottingham Forest team this weekend.

Returning attackers give Maresca something to think about

Marc Guiu at Selhurst Park. (Photo by Julian Finney/Getty Images)

There is some potentially game changing news though – as the Evening Standard point out here, manager Enzo Maresca has been hinting that two other attacking options could soon be available to him.

Marc Guiu has been out injured since January, but in the build up to the Man U game Maresca made it sound like he’s pretty close to being available:

“Unfortunately, Marc is still coming back from injury,” Maresca said last Thursday.

“He has started to train with us recently but is not ready to start. So we are working on different options for Friday night in the absence of Nico [Jackson].”

If he’s been training for more than a week, he’s likely in line for some minutes.

It’s a similar story with Christopher Nkunku – before the Man U game, Maresca said “Christo is close to coming back and training with us… probably next week.”

Maresca likely to persist with George up top

But despite both attacking options providing more striker experience than George, we can’t see Maresca going with either.

They’re too freshly returned from fitness problems to be thrown into such a high intensity game, for one. And equally importantly, both have not looked great when used this season.

So even though it didn’t work out too great against Man U, we expect George to be leading the line in our biggest game of the season come Sunday.