Enzo Maresca admitted Chelsea could have no complaints about their 3–1 defeat to Leeds United on Wednesday night, confessing the Blues were outplayed “in all aspects.”
Spirits had been high at Chelsea after a stunning week that featured a 3–0 win over Barcelona in the Champions League and a 1–1 draw with Premier League leaders Arsenal which could have easily yielded more. But Wednesday’s trip to Elland Road provided a stern reality check.
Jaka Bijol headed the underdogs ahead early on, before Ao Tanaka’s screamer added a deserved second before the break. Substitute Pedro Neto halved the deficit soon after the restart but some calamitous play out from the back handed Dominic Calvert-Lewin the chance to kill the game off with just under 20 minutes to go.
“A very poor night,” Maresca said bluntly. “[Leeds] deserved to win the game, they were better in all aspects.
“There is nothing that we can take from this game. The only thing we can do is try to understand the mistake we have done, try to reset, because in 48 hours we have one more game.
"I hope that we had a bad night because they were ... on the ball, off the ball, second ball, they were much better than us in all the aspects.”
Neto, hailed by Maresca as one of very few positives after the final whistle, offered a thoroughly unimpressed reflection to Sky Sports.
“They were better than us at everything,” he conceded. “It’s difficult to take, we have to learn from that but we have to clear our minds, it happens. We are already focused on Bournemouth.
“Sometimes it happens, we had a bad day, they had more intensity, attitude, won the second balls and had more desire than us. We cannot take games for granted. Of course it hurts, it’s the worst part in football, Sometimes you can lose and say you gave everything on the pitch, but today we have to take some responsibility, all of us. Sometimes it happens, we are human.
“We had a really good month, it’s just a bad day. We don’t have explanation for that. Everyone wants to win.”
Estêvão Withdrawn After ‘Welcome to Leeds’ Moment
With Chelsea chasing the game at the interval, there was some surprise to see Maresca sacrifice 18-year-old Estêvão who, despite underperforming in the first half, remains one of the Blues’ most unpredictable attackers.
Asked to explain his decision after the game, Maresca admitted he feared Estêvão may have let the emotion of the fixture get the better of him, with a petulant swipe at Gabriel Gudmundsson bringing a yellow card six minutes before the break.
“I think the feeling with Estêvão was, you know, a little bit ‘welcome to Leeds,’” Maresca said.
“Sometimes aged 18, you struggle to manage emotion, so it was better to change him and to avoid any red card.”
Maresca also confessed Chelsea sorely missed the influence of suspended midfielder Moisés Caicedo, whose own red card against Arsenal will keep him sidelined for a further two games.
“We missed Moi tonight,” Maresca acknowledged. “We’re going to miss Moi in the next game. He’s an important player.
“Moi is a player that for us is an important player for any team in the world, because he’s top.”
READ THE LATEST CHELSEA NEWS, TRANSFER RUMOURS AND MORE
This article was originally published on www.si.com as Enzo Maresca Condemns Woeful Chelsea, Explains Early Estevao Substitution.
