“Either he’s training them too hard… or he’s not motivating them” – Enzo Maresca challenged by ESPN pundits | OneFootball

At full time of Chelsea’s dire 0-0 draw with Brentford, ESPN’s pundits looked back at the game. They were very disappointed by what they had seen. Stevie Nicol in particular was pretty harsh in his criticism.

“They’re not really clicking in the same way they were before Christmas,” Luis Miguel Echegaray said, and Nicol went a step further.

“They’re not going to get a Champions League spot if they leave out some of the best players in the Premier League out,” Nicol said.

“We’re in the most important part of the season… now Chelsea right now are banging on the door for Champions League, so they have to make sure that’s the priority. But it doesn’t look like the priority if you’re not playing your top player. You leave Cucurella out as well… why are you not playing your best team at this stage of the season?”

We’re sure that Maresca would defend his decisions by saying he was under good medical advice to not use Cole Palmer, Nicolas Jackson or Marc Cucurella from the start.

You can see Nicol speaking in the clip embedded here:

Nicol questions Maresca’s motivation

“I would also say: why have your team lost the desire and the willingness, and the energy and the spark. Chelsea, since Christmas, have just been slowly running out of gas. They look as though somebody’s sucking the energy out of them every time they go out on the field. And that’s down to the manager. He’s either training them too hard and they don’t have the legs for the game, or he’s not motivating them properly. Too often recently I’ve seen a Chelsea side taking the field which doesn’t look as though it’s been wound up. It doesn’t look as though a manager has been motivating them.”

Those are some very big accusations, but one can see why Nicol is making them.