Football pundit Gary Neville has blamed Chelsea manager Enzo Maresca's substitutions for Chelsea's 2-1 loss against Liverpool on Sunday, October 20. He believes the subs affected the team's fluency and the starting XI played better football, except Jadon Sancho.
After the match, Neville highlighted how the Blues' performance deteriorated after the five substitutions that Maresca made. He also felt that the new Chelsea boss is sometimes forced to make changes due to the plethora of players at his disposal. He said while analyzing the game on Sky Sports:
"The substitutions, because they have so many players, and you have got lots of players, maybe there is an element of Maresca which then feels like he has to make substitutions, but I just think maybe the quality, the performance, was deteriorated with the five substitutions.
"I thought Chelsea were at their best with the starting XI. Maybe you could argue that Sancho going off at half-time, one way or the other, doesn't really count for much, but I just felt as though maybe the substitutions didn't help them."
In his post-match press conference, Maresca revealed that the substitutions were pre-planned because the players were returning from injuries. Romeo Lavia and Reece James were to play a maximum of 55-60 minutes in the game, he claimed.
"Yeah, for him and Romeo [Lavia], the idea was for him and Romeo to have one hour or 55 minutes maximum. I was quite afraid to keep them on for more minutes on the pitch so I decided to change both of them on 55 minutes," Maresca said (via The Chelsea Chronicle).
Liverpool beat Chelsea 2-1 at Anfield, with Mohamed Salah scoring the opener and Curtis Jones netting the winner for the home side. Nicolas Jackson had pulled the away side level early in the second half but they failed to add to it.
Chelsea manager happy with performance at Liverpool
Enzo Maresca was pleased with Chelsea's performance against Liverpool despite the defeat. The manager thought they controlled the game well but needed to do better in attack. He said in his post-match press conference (via football.london):
"I think the performance was very good. I just said, we don't like losing games, dropping points but if you have to decide the way, then this is probably the way. I've been in the stadium many times and have seen Liverpool for a long time, it's not easy. I think overall, we controlled the game and for most parts of the game we dominated the game, but we lost. We are not happy. We don't like [it] but as I said, the performance on and off the ball was very good."
This was the Blues' second defeat of the Premier League season, pushing them to sixth in the table. They currently have 14 points after eight league games, three fewer than third and fourth-placed Arsenal and Aston Villa, respectively.