Athletic: Maresca decision was “a cry for help” and a demand for more attackers | OneFootball

After a painful result on Saturday night, Chelsea fans are still surveying the wreckage on a Monday morning.

Liam Twomey is in the same boat. He’s not a fan, he just covers the team for the Athletic. But that gives him just as much insight, and perhaps a little more objectivity too.

His piece today goes over the biggest issue which came to the fore in the loss to Brighton – the striker situation.

In the game on Monday night against West Ham, both Nicolas Jackson and Marc Guiu hurt themselves, and after the game manager Enzo Maresca insisted that he and his team had solutions. Well, they didn’t. As we’ve seen all season, Nkunku isn’t the sort of striker you can play up front alone – at least not in this system.

As Twomey wrote, his false 9ing around the box made us all want Jackson back:

“[Jackson’s] ability to spin, turn and, above all, run relentlessly towards goal with and without the ball helped utterly dismantle Brighton’s high defensive line inside 45 minutes at Stamford Bridge in September. Here, with no outlet, Enzo Maresca’s team had no answers.”

Defender up front was a “cry for help” from Maresca

Tosin Adarabioyo races a Brighton attacker to the ball. (Photo by Darren Walsh/Chelsea FC)

Things got really bad late on when defender Tosin was sent up front to be a battering ram and a presence in the box, as Twomey notes, it never looked convincing:

“In the closing minutes, Maresca’s decision to send Tosin Adarabioyo up front felt both like tactical desperation and an unsubtle cry for help, less than a week after the close of a transfer window that saw Chelsea decide not to sign a striker and loan Joao Felix to Milan for the remainder of the campaign.”

It’s quite funny (and futile) to send a “message to the board” about your squad in the first game you play after the window closes. But here we are.