Maresca admits to “mistake” which put his team under pressure | OneFootball

Towards the end of Chelsea’s win over Tottenham tonight the Blues were very much in charge, but the final few minutes plus a lengthy stoppage time saw them take a step back and let the away team take control.

Enzo Maresca was asked about this in the press conference, and said he hadn’t minded – he wanted his team to know that sometimes they were going to have to weather a storm or two.

“If you want to become a team, I think you need also to learn and to play in the way we played in the last 10 minutes. Win a game in a dirty way,” the manager said.

“Because I think for 90 minutes until the extra time we were in control, we created chances enough to win the game. We created chances enough in the first half.”

Maresca admits to subs mistake which guaranteed nervy finish

Enzo Maresca is active on the touchline. (Photo by Julian Finney/Getty Images)

But Maresca admitted that the raft of changes he made were a mistake towards the end. The two VAR disallowed goals and a few mini bouts of handbags meant that extra time at the end of the game was always likely, but the 12 minutes that were eventually handed out caught most people by surprise.

“And then to be honest, that’s been my mistake [bringing Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall and Tosin Adarabioyo on for Cole Palmer and Fernandez] because I did the change before I saw the extra time. And when I saw 12 minutes, I saw that probably it was too early to make that kind of change. But fortunately we won the game and we are happy.”

Adding another centre back and a midfielder guaranteed a siege at the end pretty much, but did at least mean we had the players to deal with it.