London is Blue Dispatch #087

0.02. 

That's the xG of the shot Marc Cucurella unleashed for his wonderful goal. Mathematically speaking, that shot had a 2% chance of ending up as a goal. In the game before, against Copenhagen, Reece James' shot, taken from a near identical position in the left-half space, had an xG of 0.03. Those are not the kind of odds that good, even half-decent, football teams rely on consistently.

Cole Palmer's first missed penalty aside, Chelsea generated only 0.18 xG in the first 45’ against the Foxes. Against the Danish side, it was 0.07. A team that is now struggling to score in the first half and has struggled for months to keep a cleansheet in the 2^nd leaves far too much in the hands of the opposition. If it takes two fullbacks to crack off shots worth a combined 0.05 xG to win you two games, what does it say about your manager and the system?

What is Marescaball exactly? Sarriball minus Eden Hazard? Because for now what was sold as a savant’s vision is about as inspiring as a banana taped to a wall and about as ingenious as a rainbow photographed in black & white.

Enzo Maresca famously told Leicester fans once –“we have our way to try to win the game since the start. I can understand sometimes that they want us to attack more direct. But it’s not going to happen, never, while I’m here (at Leicester.)" To his credit, he is delivering exactly what he promised – a style of football as bland and unappetizing as a plate of British food.

Yes, injuries are a mitigating factor, since two of your top 5 scorers are injured. But just like Palmer is now, Madueke and Jackson were struggling to score or assist a full month before their injuries. Chelsea need 24 goals in their last 10 games to equal last season’s tally of 77. Arsenal, Liverpool, Forest, Everton all have better defensive records while Newcastle and Tottenham will ensure that task is going to be as simple as an Elden Rings boss.

Why so much clamour after a win, you ask? Simple, because the you cannot put bandages on fractured bones. The truth, in no uncertain terms, is that Chelsea’s last win against a side in the top half of the table came 12 games, and a 100 days ago. That’s a third of the season, and means there have been no wins against the top 10 in six games in 2025. With half of the remaining games against the top 10, one imagines the last quarter of the season will be… what’s a kind word for car crash?

Right now, this team is winning in spite of Maresca and not because of him. Leicester, for one of the only times this season, moved from their back 4 to a back 3 knowing Chelsea’s manager has no idea what to do against back 5s. More pointless passing and probing, until the hour mark, where panic set in and everyone abandoned the script. The spaces left in midfield left by players saying “do one” to #tactics have so often led to familiar second half despair, but just like many times this season, Moises Caicedo delivered a monsterclass in cleaning up danger by himself, an unfair responsibility that has also kept him on top of the PL foul and yellow card charts all season.

Lady luck will not be this kind this often. For now, Maresca and his players can breathe, knowing that they are exactly in the table where they are expected to be – and as long as they stay there come the end of the season, no one will remember how they won their games. The signs though, are ominous.