It must be a lot of fun being a Chelsea supporter.
Exhausting, but fun.
They are English football’s most inexplicable club, prone to chaos and confusion like no other; to sudden dizzying highs and scarcely believable lows that range from Jose Mourinho collapses to geopolitical events forcing their club into the hands of erratic American billionaires.
So it’s perfectly normal – reassuringly incomprehensible, in fact – that Chelsea and Enzo Maresca are defying pre-season expectations to arguably the greatest degree in Premier League history.
Before the campaign began Chelsea’s obscenely bloated squad, hasty manager change, and arguments at boardroom level made them a laughing stock. Appointing an inexperienced head coach whose meticulous tactics required patience (and whose slow possession style at Leicester was as exciting as chess, the game upon which his ideas were supposedly based) looked like the worst decision of the Todd Boehly era so far.
But we were completely wrong. Maresca is not at all the caricature he was painted as and Chelsea, implausibly, are very much in the title race.
Premier League 24/25 title odds (via Sky Bet)
- Liverpool - 4/6
- Arsenal - 3/1
- Chelsea - 6/1
- Manchester City - 9/1
- 500/1 bar
Odds correct at 1345 BST (12/12/24)
Maresca has done a magnificent job cutting down the squad to a manageable size and finding his first and second 11 so quickly. His ruthlessness has made the task look easy, when in reality creating order out of chaos like that is a minor miracle, making it all the more impressive that the tactics he’s implemented run counter to that process; embracing the chaos and abandoning his old reliance on order.
The achingly slow, rigidly demarcated possession football that Pep Guardiola disciple Maresca deployed at Leicester is nowhere to be seen. Instead, Chelsea are a fast-breaking, transition-centred side leaning into the wildness of Cole Palmer, Nicolas Jackon, and their abundance of direct wingers.
Chelsea are top of the Premier League for ‘direct attacks’ (77) and shots from fast breaks (29), plus they rank in the top three for attempted through balls (43), progressive carries (336), and successful take-ons (138).
They move in straight lines and rarely sideways, which is a pretty remarkable trick for a manager who so recently appeared to stand for something very different.
Perhaps, then, we simply aren’t seeing the real Maresca’s Chelsea yet, and in time he will start to rein in some of that freedom. But judging by the careful rhythms of their 3-4-2-1 formation it certainly looks as though the Chelsea players are already listening closely to instruction.
Here, too, is contrast and contradiction. Maresca’s Chelsea always play in the same ‘3-box-3’ formation, as it’s fashionably known, with a full-back stepping into midfield to turn a 4-2-3-1 into a shape that has a ‘box’ (actually a square, if we’re being pedantic) made up of two number sixes and two number tens.
But within that consistent setup is huge variety. Cole Palmer has been moved from the top right corner of the box to the top left corner, leaning out to join the right or left winger depending on where the opponent’s weakness is.
More unusually, Malo Gusto and Marc Cucurella often invert into the base of midfielder but are sometimes played in the advanced eight position, a sight so rare it’s almost a Maresca-patented innovation. Trent Alexander-Arnold is the only other full-back in the Premier League popping up in those spaces.
Rotating the component parts of the box to that extent is the secret to Chelsea’s success; the reason they are unpredictable and, therefore, so rarely nullified. Better still, Maresca has shown himself to be a very astute in-game tactician, often recalibrated the box midfield mid-match to change the momentum.
There are even further depths of detail we could look into. Against Arsenal Chelsea were cautious like Maresca’s Leicester, carefully recycling the ball and refusing fast breaks to stay in control, whereas against Brighton they consistently hit long balls over the top of Fabian Hurzeler’s high line.
Suffice to say Maresca is the real deal: an adaptable and granular tactician already getting this young team to follow his advice closely. When you add in the star power of Palmer, the fearlessness of youth, and the frankly absurd depth of talent on the bench, it increasingly looks as though Chelsea are a goalkeeper (and maybe a centre-back) short of rivalling Liverpool in a 90+ point season.
Not that they will necessarily need that many points. Liverpool’s performances against Newcastle United and Girona over the last week have shown hints of fatigue. A points return in the mid-80s seems relatively likely.
Besides, Chelsea are already on their tail and were the better side in a 2-1 defeat to Liverpool at Anfield in October. Had the result reflected Chelsea’s superiority they would now be ahead of Arne Slot’s side in the table, and nobody would doubt their chances of finishing above a Liverpool team also in transition and also with a manager new to the Premier League.
Judging by the club’s history in the 21st century, it’s still worth backing them. Nothing could be weirder – nothing could be more Chelsea – than Maresca, out of absolutely nowhere, turning the perma-crisis of the Clearlake ownership into a Premier League title.
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