Enzo Maresca conceded that his Chelsea side need to ‘find different solutions’ quickly after they failed to register a single shot on target in a humbling 3-0 defeat to Brighton.
Less than a week on from their FA Cup elimination at the hands of the Seagulls, the visitors were beaten all ends up by Fabian Hurzeler’s men in the Premier League.
Kaoru Mitoma opened the scoring with a solo wondergoal in the 27th minute and the visitors offered very little in the way of a response after Yankuba Minteh struck either side of the break to increase the deficit on the south coast.
The result – a third loss in four games for Chelsea in all competitions – means champions Manchester City can leapfrog Enzo Maresca’s men into the top four with victory over Newcastle at the Etihad this weekend.
Cole Palmer had another frustrating night for the Blues and the forward’s latest setback means he is without a goal in his last five appearances for the west London giants.
The sight of Noni Madueke hobbling off the pitch in the first half only added to Chelsea’s misery and Maresca confirmed that the winger was likely to be out ‘for a while’ at his post-match press conference.
Asked for an update on Malo Gusto and Madueke, the Chelsea boss replied: ‘Malo is okay, he’s okay. Noni, unfortunately it’s a hamstring problem so he will be out for a while.’
Chelsea appeared to be missing Nicolas Jackson’s presence up front at the Amex Stadium, with Maresca’s men failing to muster up even one shot on goal for their travelling support.
‘Hopefully we can get a shot on goal. But especially, for me, we arrive quite well at the edge of their box. Quite clear, quite clean,’ Maresca responded when quizzed on the startling stat
‘The problem is then in the last third you need the ball inside the box, you need the player there, and the first one, the main one, is the No.9 inside their box.
‘In this moment, Nico [Jackson] is not there, Marc [Guiu] is not there. We need to find different solutions.
‘I think in the first half we had two or three moments where we could score that we missed.
‘But the bad feeling in this moment is that easily we can concede chances and we struggle to create chances so we need to find the balance in that.’
Palmer cut an especially frustrated figure throughout much of the second half and Maresca reassured fans that the rest of his squad and staff were feeling just as disappointed by their result results.
‘We play football as a team. It’s not tennis. It’s not only Cole Palmer who is frustrated. We are all the same in this moment,’ the Italian explained.
‘For sure, we feel upset and we feel, especially, very sorry for the fans that were here but, in general, for our fans.
‘In this moment you cannot offer this kind of performance with 14 games to go, now 13 games to go.’
Maresca believes his side were ‘in control’ prior to Mitoma’s strike but lacked the necessary ‘desire’ to fight back and find an equaliser.
‘It’s something that we need to think about, it’s something we need to talk about,’ he continued.
‘As I said, you have 14 games to. Winning tonight and you can go one point from third. You can make the gap bigger with the rest.
‘I think we approached the game quite and well and until the Mitoma goal we were in control and we were close many times to create chances.
‘Then after the goal, we lost a little bit of something. It’s something we need to review and improve.’
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