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Evening Standard
Evening Standard
Sport
Alex Young

Enzo Maresca explains why Chelsea lost to Celtic with message to fans

Chelsea manager Enzo Maresca says the squad have "many things to improve" upon after a miserable 4-1 defeat to Celtic in Indiana.

The loss means Chelsea remain winless in two games in the United States, havng fought back in midweek to draw with third-tier Wrexham.

Maresca, though, remains unconcerned ahead of facing Club America and then Manchester City in the next week.

"As we said, the result is always important. For us, we need to analyse the game in general. I think on the ball, the team were 10 times better than in the game against Wrexham and that is important because we can see the amount of chances we created first half and second half.

(AFP via Getty Images)

"And off the ball, for sure, we can improve things and you can see sometimes we confused when we need to play short, a little bit longer. It's part of the process."

"For sure, we need many things to improve off the ball. One of the things we did bad today was when the ball was not under pressure, to maintain the high-line. When the ball is not under pressure, you need to drop.

"We still confuse some things on and off the ball. For me, it's normal in this moment. We are trying to do something new. But for sure, game after game, training after training, we are going to be ready."

On the ball it is much better, we created chances but off the ball we need to improve

Enzo Maresca

Chelsea face Premier League champions City on the opening weekend of the new domestic season, and Maresca moved to allay fans of an undercooked team. He said: "We are, for sure, going to be ready for that game or at least we are going to improve things for that game. But I am not thinking for the first official game that everything is fine. It's a little bit difficult.

"The result is always important but in this moment we need to judge and analyse different things. On the ball we created chances, off the ball we probably conceded too much and that is something we need to improve."

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