Maresca salvages Chelsea marriage for now despite inexplicable mistakes against Fulham

Chelsea delivered a win they needed to keep their Champions League hopes alive but it still feels as though Enzo Maresca is building on quicksand.

Enzo Maresca bottled his threat to quit but he was always going to: his position of strength as the settler in a fling with Leicester is substantially weaker as the puncher trying to avoid being dumped by Chelsea.

The final ten minutes at Craven Cottage were the equivalent of a last-minute weekend away, or inviting a third party into the relationship to try and spice things up. But awkwardly fumbling around before finally screwing Marco Silva over doesn’t feel like a particularly sound long-term strategy to stay together.

What came before then was a deeply unflattering continuation of the last few weeks. Chelsea were plodding and ponderous, conceding through an individual mistake which exposed myriad weaknesses in the system, and struggling to muster a response thereafter.

It boggles the mind how Reece James could have no awareness of his surroundings, nor how no teammate bothered to help someone they saw was about to drown in a sea of Ryan Sessegnon and Sasa Lukic. Chelsea have assembled this squad at ludicrously vast expense, yet seemingly none of these players know to even offer a simple “man on” shout that fills the air at the local Powerleague.

James ambling down the right-hand side out of defence was bad enough; being muscled off the ball by Sessegnon was amateurish and Noni Madueke watching it all while strolling back on the touchline, arms stretched out in incredulity, was inexplicably poor.

One simple run and a ball inside to the unmarked Alex Iwobi later, and Chelsea were behind. It did not feel like a coincidence when Maresca, understandably aghast in his technical area, took both James and Madueke off at half-time.

Fulham winning their duels was the story of much of the game. The 5ft 10ins Sessegnon cannot have been the most physically dominant presence in many of his 223 professional career matches but he bullied Chelsea for long periods. One of his fouls late in the second half resulted in Moises Caicedo taking a quick free-kick as the visitors chased an equaliser, only for him to pass the ball straight out for a throw-in. A team capable of technical excellence remains abysmal when it comes to basic facets of the game. A frequent and laughable lament of Frank Lampard’s miserable caretaker reign should not remain relevant two years later.

That Chelsea did eventually equalise from what was essentially a 50/50 Cole Palmer did not fully commit to was fitting. Pedro Neto chested a high ball down, Antonee Robinson won the personal battle to poke the ball away but lost the war as substitute Tyrique George waited on the edge of the area, unleashing a fine finish past Bernd Leno.

Chelsea had been applying some pressure by that point but not much, and certainly no more than Fulham in chasing a second goal.

Even that did not spark irresistible wave after wave of attack in search of a winner. Neto and Andreas Pereira both had their sides’ only two shots at 1-1 and the latter’s happened to be the truest, a fine strike into the roof of the net after a lovely touch to bring in Enzo Fernandez’s centre.

It was probably a deserved winner on the balance of play, and one Maresca earned through his changes. Chelsea remain outsiders for Champions League qualification but failure to win would likely have ruled them out of the race entirely. As the Italian said before the game, this was “a final” for the Blues.

Avenging the late Boxing Day defeat to Fulham – and Maresca proving he can beat a coach on his second meeting with them this season – was a welcome by product of a necessary step, even if everything still seems deeply uncertain.