There is a growing likelihood that Enzo Maresca leaves Chelsea, with the club holding crisis talks with their head coach on New Year’s Day.
The Italian has been under mounting pressure following just one win in the last seven Premier League matches, and Chelsea were booed off following Tuesday’s 2-2 draw with Bournemouth at Stamford Bridge.
Chelsea won only two of their eight matches across all competitions in December, one of which was against League One side Cardiff, and performances are also acknowledged to have dipped.
There is absolutely no guarantee that Maresca will still be in charge when Chelsea visit Manchester City on Sunday. Depending on developments, a parting of the ways between Chelsea and Maresca could come on Thursday.
It is understood that Maresca has become increasingly uneasy about some of the ways in which the club is run, and he is considering his position just as the Chelsea hierarchy are considering his.
Those feelings led the 45-year-old to admit in a press conference that the period after the 2-1 defeat to Atalanta in the Champions League on December 9 had been the “worst 48 hours” of his tenure because he and his players had not felt “supported”.
Those quotes confused Chelsea staff but were generally accepted to have been directed at the club’s hierarchy and signified a fraying of the relationship between Maresca and his bosses.
After the Bournemouth draw on Tuesday, Maresca chose not to conduct his post-match media duties. The claim was that he had been too unwell to speak to the press.
Maresca won the Conference League and Club World Cup at the end of last season, which marked Chelsea’s first two pieces of silverware since former owner Roman Abramovich sold the club to Todd Boehly and Clearlake Capital in May 2022.
When he was hired in July 2024, it was originally planned that, barring a run of disastrous results, Maresca would be safe in his job until a two-year review in the summer of 2026.
