Get all your news in one place.
100’s of premium titles.
One app.
Start reading
FourFourTwo
FourFourTwo
Sport
Ed McCambridge

Pat Nevin: 'Enzo Maresca needs two years to bed in his ideas at Chelsea'

Leicester City Manager Enzo Maresca during the pre-season friendly match between Liverpool FC and Leicester City at the National Stadium on July 30, 2023 in Singapore. (Photo by Lampson Yip - Clicks Images/Getty Images).

Enzo Maresca will need at least two years at Stamford Bridge is he's to get Chelsea playing his style of football. That's according to former Blues winger Pat Nevin, who starred for the London club between 1983 and 1988. 

Nevin is concerned the new manager, who's joined from Championship winners Leicester City ahead of the new season, won't get the time he needs to turn the squad into winners.

"With the amount of young players in that squad, and the amount of youngsters that will inevitably arrive – from all over the world, by the way, and many of whom won’t have played Premier League football before – I think it’ll take two years for him to really bed his ideas in," Nevin tells FourFourTwo on behalf of NewBettingOffers.co.uk.

Chelsea owner Todd Boehly (Image credit: Adam Davy)

"It would take any coach that long with that sort of squad. But is he going to get that? Who knows?"

Nevin was surprised Chelsea owner Todd Boehly even decided to sack the previous coach, Mauricio Pochettino, after the Argentine steered an inexperienced and hodgepodge squad to a sixth-placed finish. 

"At the end of last season – a difficult season in terms of results – I was thinking, ‘OK, hang on, things are starting to look all right!’ And then they sack the coach," says Nevin. "So what we’ve got now is an experiment. It’s one that involves a coach who’ll have no say on the players he’ll be working with next season. It’s unusual."

More Chelsea stories

Premier League released XI as Manchester United and Liverpool stars feature

Chelsea £145m quartet to be axed as Enzo Maresca begins overhaul: report

Arsenal could beat Chelsea to Serie A superstar, with summer bid expected: report

Sign up to read this article
Read news from 100’s of titles, curated specifically for you.
Already a member? Sign in here
Related Stories
Top stories on inkl right now
One subscription that gives you access to news from hundreds of sites
Already a member? Sign in here
Our Picks
Fourteen days free
Download the app
One app. One membership.
100+ trusted global sources.