Enzo Maresca’s rigid tactics can look exceptional but they must now work on big boys

Crunch time against the best will come soon for Guardiola absolutist and the squad his owners have spent more than £1 billion to assemble

Enzo Maresca v Mikel Arteta: the collision of the Pep Guardiola alumni, who served their apprenticeship nodding earnestly at the stream of consciousness the great coach of his generation would direct at them in moments of stress. This pair is the most successful thus far, of a lineage of those privy to at least some of the secrets of the Pep playbook.
Yet this is not likely to be two versions of bootleg Guardiola trying to imitate the original. Arteta is no Guardiola facsimile in terms of style. He is quite prepared to low-block his way to a desired outcome. Maresca, on the other hand, is an absolutist in terms of his approach. The question is whether his style will work against the best teams.
This is a big game for the Chelsea manager, at home to an Arsenal team struggling with injuries, uncertain in form, and on the face of it, beatable. Chelsea, the club, are in their usual hurry. An ownership which has sanctioned in excess of £1 billion gross in spending on transfer fees alone and is impatient to beat the best in the Premier League. Chelsea’s form is by no means blistering in the league: they have two wins from their past five matches.
In games such as these, the Maresca approach faces its big examination. There has been an opening day defeat by Guardiola himself – no shame in that – and more recently Liverpool, but sooner or later a big win is required.
Maresca’s style has broadly been a team that is 3-4-3 in possession and 4-4-2 out of possession. Certainly, in the recent defeat by Liverpool, his full-back Malo Gusto moved into midfield when Chelsea had the ball. Gusto occupied a left-sided No 10 position to form part of a midfield box. Moises Caicedo and Romeo Lavía were the defensive midfielders at the base with Gusto and Cole Palmer in the advanced positions. The wingers, Noni Madueke and Jadon Sancho, and later Pedro Neto, stayed wide and high up the pitch.
In that system, for the opposition the space is obvious – it comes down Gusto’s side. He started as a right-back against Liverpool and when he goes forward the defensive three that remain when the team is in possession have to shuttle across. It is a calculated risk: Chelsea can be attacked on a quick transition down the flank vacated by Gusto, or whoever plays as the inverted full-back. Against Arsenal, that is most likely to be Gabriel Martinelli on the left.
Maresca’s side lost narrowly to Liverpool playing that way. In the 17 months or so that the Italian has managed in English football, the trend has been that he does not adjust the basics of his approach for any opponent. In full flow, Chelsea can look excellent. They have punished the likes of Wolverhampton Wanderers, West Ham and Brighton. Against sides with exceptional players, the risk-reward calculation is much more acute. Chances are Maresca goes for it again against Arsenal.
Arteta will try to find the weaknesses. His team arrive at Stamford Bridge carrying some critical injuries: Declan Rice and Kai Havertz among them as well as long-term absentee, captain Martin Odegaard.
There is much at stake for both men.
As Leicester City manager last season, Maresca presided over a stupendous start that had the team 12 points clear in the Championship by mid-February. From what was an admittedly very high bar mid-February, that form fell away with a run of seven defeats and six wins in their last 14 games. Leicester still won the division with a game to spare but – in the end – by a single point.
Maresca stuck to his guns throughout. Whether he would have been quite such a devotee of that approach with Leicester in the Premier League is a counterfactual without a satisfactory answer. He may well say that he would not have changed, but that looks very different when a team is living defeat after defeat, as Southampton have found. With Chelsea, he does not have to concern himself with Premier League survival. Instead he has to demonstrate he can beat the division’s top teams.
Maresca’s Chelsea have beaten Newcastle and took a point last Sunday at Old Trafford in a game in which they looked the better side. But beating Arsenal would be one of the standouts of the new ownership era. Not least because after more than two years this is very much the house that Behdad Eghbali – and Todd Boehly – built, in terms of manager and squad.
For Chelsea, the last meeting with Arsenal was a catastrophe. If the fate of Mauricio Pochettino was not sealed already by late April then that 5-0 defeat felt like the point of no return. Even so, Pochettino had some successes when it came to the title-challenger teams.
Pochettino’s Chelsea drew home and away in the Premier League with Manchester City. They won both league games against Tottenham, including 4-1 away. They lost by the same score at Anfield but got a point at home. They beat Manchester United and Newcastle United at Stamford Bridge. There were many bad defeats too, but the games against the elite were not the biggest problem Pochettino faced.
Pochettino was much less committed to one approach. As Maresca and Arteta learnt in their days at City, Guardiola does not compromise in that regard. It has worked for him. He has built a squad and a tactical rigour where at times City have felt unbeatable. The question is whether any other, Maresca included, can walk that path with quite the same confidence.