“No connection between Chelsea supporters and Maresca” – Sky’s top pundit lays out the harsh truth | OneFootball

Enzo Maresca’s comments about Chelsea fans at the weekend have already made waves.

The manager put some blame on the “environment” created by fans for encouraging both goalkeeper Robert Sanchez and Enzo Fernandez to play the long passes forward which led to turnovers and then Ipswich goals.

Indirectly, he was effectively blaming the fans for those goals. It’s not gone down well.

On Monday Night Football just now, Jamie Carragher picked up this whole farrago for further investigation, playing slow motion replays of Sanchez as he took goals kicks and looking at the reaction in the stadium.

“Just listen to the noise in the crowd,” Carragher explains as Sanchez nervily prepares to restart play. There is a wave of booing and jeering from within Stamford Bridge.

“That’s because they don’t want him to play it out from the back. You see the goalkeeper urging everybody up, and actually at one stage telling the crowd to calm down. So he’s been really influenced by the crowd. So he’s said push up, then another chance starts up from the crowd: ‘attack, attack, attack.'”

You can see it all in the video from Sky Sports embedded here:

Carragher says this proves Chelsea fans aren’t with Maresca

Enzo Maresca on the touchline. (Photo by Richard Pelham/Getty Images)

Carragher drew some wider conclusions from the difference between the demands of the manager and the Chelsea fans in the stadium which were very worrying indeed:

“What it tells you is that there no connection between the Chelsea supporters and the man in the dugout,” he concluded.

Unfortunately, he’s spot on. Good results have papered over the crack at times, but basically nobody enjoys Maresca’s football, and nobody feels a real connection with him as a coach. Things only tend to go one way when that is the case.