Enzo Maresca admits he ‘regrets’ not starting one Chelsea star against Leeds United – potentially a hint at his line-up for the trip to Bournemouth on Saturday.
Following an impressive run of games, including a 3-0 win over Barcelona and a 1-1 draw with Premier League leaders Arsenal, many had the Blues down as genuine title contenders.
But that momentum disappeared on Wednesday night as they were well-beaten 3-1 at Elland Road by a side battling against relegation.
Maresca was strongly criticised after the match for overly-rotating his defence, with Wesley Fofana and Reece James dropped and Trevoh Chalobah moved to right-back.
Tosin Adarabioyo and Benoit Badiashile formed the centre-back partnership but the latter was hauled off at half-time, only for his replacement Malo Gusto and Tosin to gift Leeds their third goal later on.
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Speaking in his pre-match press conference on Friday ahead of the clash against Bournemouth, Maresca said he made a mistake with his team selection.
‘One of the regrets I have after the game is I didn’t play with Josh [Acheampong].
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‘So the reason why we played with Trev, Tosin and Benoit is because analysing them [Leeds], we saw that most of the time they were playing long ball for [Dominic] Calvert-Lewin, for [Lukas] Nmecha.
‘And so we prefer physicality to win aerial duels. But even with that, we lost most of them.’
Acheampong has impressed when given the chance, with the 19-year-old making nine appearances this season, five of them starts but hasn’t featured in the Premier League since the loss to Sunderland in October.
There have been calls for the academy graduate to get more game time and Maresca went on to say that he thinks the Bournemouth match will be a ‘similar game to Leeds’, so it will be interesting to see if he gives Acheampong a chance this time round.
‘They are intense, Leeds was very intense. I think I said after the game that they were better than us in all the aspects and hopefully we can learn from that and be ready for tomorrow.’
The head coach also looked to dismiss claims his team are too inexperienced, adding: ‘We always talk about experience when we drop points. When we beat Barcelona, we drew against Arsenal, no one was mentioning about experienced players.
‘So, again, I understand that when we don’t win, we are always looking for the reason why, but I think the reason why we didn’t win against Leeds is not because of the experience, it’s because we were not good enough.
‘Who is the oldest one for us in the pitch? Who was? Tosin. Did he play good? So, it’s not about experience. It’s about that 11 players, they were not good enough. I know that we are always looking for experience, but it was a bad game for all of us.’
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