Wolverhampton, Aug 25, 2024
Chelsea will be playing Wolverhampton Wanderers on Sunday in their second Premier League game of the season. The team is aiming to get their first win and ‘build some momentum’ for the coming weeks.
“It’s a difficult place to go, 100 percent. Everywhere in the Premier League is difficult to go to and try to get points. We are going to try. Hopefully we can start getting some points in the Premier League, and from there building some momentum,” said Enzo Maresca to Chelsea’s media team.
Chelsea’s last win at the Molineux Stadium in the League dates back to September, 2019 when the West London side registered a 5-2 victory with Tammy Abraham registering a hattrick on the night. Wolves won 2-1 in December when Chelsea had last traveled to the ground.
After an abysmal 2023/24 Premier League season which saw Chelsea finish sixth in the Premier League, the Stamford Bridge based club is now facing a bigger issue which is the size of their squad.
After leaving Raheem Sterling and Ben Chilwell out of the squad to face Manchester City, the club is now actively looking to offload the players who are not in the managers plans for the season. Maresca went on to state that he picks his playing XI depending on how the players perform in training as they ‘have to fight until the end to get your place’ in the starting lineup.
“I judge and choose the first XI depending on how they work every day, all of them If they are bad in training sessions and they don’t train with intensity, they are not going to play.
If they don’t play on Sunday in the Premier League, and they think they’re going to play on Thursday, if they don’t train well from Sunday to Thursday, they are not going to play in the Premier League, and they are not going to play on Thursday,” said Maresca.
“Chelsea is a demanding club. You have to fight until the end to get your place. If you think I am going to give you a chance without working hard, forget it. The first XI is about performance. This is the way I like to work with the players,” he added.(Agency)
