Chelsea appoint new coach as well as Enzo Maresca that could be secret weapon

There aren’t many metrics that Enzo Maresca’s Leicester City didn’t impress in last season. From possession to goals scored, xG against, and having the largest wage bill, the Foxes were too good for the Championship.

It is something that has made Maresca’s already small volume of work hard to analyse. Leicester were, after all, expected to win pretty much every game. That said, their form in the first half of the season was still remarkable and attracted the attention it deserved.

Heading it up was Maresca, a man known for his stylistic and appearance similarities to Pep Guardiola more than an underwhelming first stint in management at Parma, or even his spell as assistant to Manuel Pellegrini at West Ham. The Italian was new and exciting, delivering what was demanded of his side but transforming them at the same time.

Some of the points for concern are his lack of use of youth players, how his football will scale up to the Premier League and if he can handle the pressures at Chelsea, as well as a middling (at best) set-piece record. For a club that were so strong across the board, dead-ball situations were not a forte.

According to WhoScored, Leicester managed 11 goals from set plays. This is level with Middlesbrough, Watford, Sunderland, and Queens Park Rangers. It was the joint eighth most in the league, a far from exceptional return. Other than Leeds (with nine) they were comfortably behind the top six in this ranking.

On goals conceded to set pieces the results were similarly as average. Leicester conceded the joint fourth most (13) from these situations. A worry for Maresca is that Chelsea were just as poor.

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Under Mauricio Pochettino they scored only 12 times. Nine teams managed more and only Tottenham finished above them and scored fewer. Going the other way and Chelsea were just as bad again, like Leicester. The Blues conceded 11 times from set pieces, the ninth most in the division.

It is for this reason, and an especially poor first half to the year, that they sought the services of Bernardo Cueva. Brentford’s data man (officially tactical statistician) has helped make Thomas Frank’s team one of the leading Premier League teams at set-pieces.

“Bernardo has done a fantastic job for us over the last four seasons,” said director of football Phil Giles, when announcing his exit last month. “His first season ended with promotion to the Premier League, and he has played a key role in us now achieving four successive Premier League seasons.

“Part of Bernardo’s role relates to our set-piece strategies, and this is an area I think everyone at the club can be proud about. He leaves with the blessing and best wishes of everyone at Brentford.”

That Chelsea decided to spend £750,000 on Cueva to “lead the set-piece department” as they confirmed in the statement alongside Maresca and his backroom staff, says volumes of their need for someone to take control of the area. Pochettino wasn’t too willing to accept such an appointment though.

“I am the head coach and I am going to decide if some people are going to be with me or not, or if I’m going to add more people or not to the touchline,” he said in March. “Sometimes I work [on them], sometimes Jesus Perez [his assistant], does. We are a coaching staff who work already on set-pieces. We are not only working in the gym or the tactical area.”

He continued: “[Cueva’s arrival] is the idea of the owner and sporting directors and we are very supportive. We are aware the club want to create a global area about set pieces to reinforce the two people here.

“If some people come here to add their knowledge and to help us and to be better, very welcome. We cannot go against the things that can help us to be better and to maybe help us to win games.”

The Argentine boss had previously highlighted a lack of height in his team as a reason for their weakness in both boxes. It was one of several gripes that led him to openly criticise the squad building of the co-sporting directors with it also impacting the team selection early on in the season.

“We work a lot on set-pieces,” he also said. “After that, it is about the quality of the player. It is about the takers. We don’t have a specialist. Maybe Chilly [Ben Chilwell] is good in the delivery but after that, we don’t have a specialist.

“If you want to be good at set-pieces, we work a lot. But then you need good takers. When you have good takers, and of course, Wolves have good takers, and like Manchester City have or other clubs. It is not down to the work. We work similarly. But the problem is to have good takers.

“We have specialists [coaches]. We are a coaching staff in charge of everything. You can have a specialist and you can promote the specialist. Or you can have the specialist and not promote the specialist. It depends how you want to sell the idea of working on set-pieces.

“We have a specialist, we have a group of analysts for set-pieces, we have the coaching staff and we work a lot. And then it is about the quality. At the moment, we were talking about trying to find a good specialist [player] for next season.

“Look before at West Ham and after. What changed? After and before? It’s not the same. The taker is [James] Ward-Prowse. Or he is Pochettino, no? Prowsey is a much better taker than me. For sure, you can work, like West Ham were working. But now, you add a player like him, you increase the percentage. That is football. Football belongs to the players. Not to the specialists.”

Ultimately it will now be Maresca that is tasked with best making use of Cueva. It is expected that he will need to be more open to the idea of having some grasp of set-pieces taken away from him. Pochettino wasn’t and it was part of a breakdown in the relationship between him and the decision-makers.