On July 20th 2023 Chelsea faced Wrexham in their first pre-season game in the USA and won that game 5-0.
Almost exactly a year later it was a case of deja vu as The Blues faced Wrexham again in the USA but this time around, they were actually lucky not to be on the wrong side of defeat. Enzo Maresca was very close to losing his very first game in charge if it wasn’t for a great late save from Lucas Bergstrom, and a tidy finish from Lesley Ugochukwu.
Wrexham are a division higher than they were this time last year and they had another year of experience with the same manager and basically the same squad. I knew they were going to cause us problems, I knew they would be well-organised, and I knew they would be sitting off in a deep block allowing Chelsea to keep the ball in deep areas. This can be tough to break down whatever the level is you’re facing.
What I also know is that we should never over react to pre-season friendly games, especially the very first game.
Of course, we all want to see positives and progress as the games go on and again of course, it’s great if we can get some wins on the board too for momentum. All of that is absolutely important. But so is the fact that we shouldn’t over react to anything. There was always going to be fatigue, always going to be sloppy passes, always going to be rustiness, and always going to be time needed for Maresca to implement his system.
There was many positives to take away from this game despite conceding two and almost losing the game.
After Chelsea scored the first goal they dominated and used the ball well. After starting off very slow and cautious in possession, Chelsea soon started moving it quicker with one-touch passing and being progressive with movements. This was our best spell of the game from then until half time.
As always, the wholesale changes at half time then put us back to square one and also with less quality on the pitch. Wrexham began to come out the blocks a bit more and offered more of a threat. They got their goals from battling and being smart and showing quality in the final third. Chelsea looked lackluster through most of the second half but still had decent spells of possession too.
Chelsea bossed it with 75% possession and had 5 more attempts on goal (11) than Wrexham had (6). Yet Wrexham were more clinical and better with their efforts on goal, having 1 more on target (4) than Chelsea did (3).
Chelsea made 767 passes compared to Wrexham’s 254, and they also had a 91% passing accuracy compared to Wrexham’s 73%. But of course, none of that matters unless you have the end product to get the scoreline positive, which is always the most important stat in football.
We have to remember that we have many key players to still come back in as well, so we will see more improvements as we go on. In the end, we did well to get the draw here, imagine the meltdown if we lost!?
It was a good little run around to stretch the legs and start to put in place how they want to play for the rest of the season.
There was negatives as well as positives, and I am sure that Maresca will have a lot to take away and work on as a result.
“I’m very happy about the performance in general,” Maresca said after the game. “We started just two weeks ago, it’s important that us as the staff can start to see the identity of the team. Tonight it was quite clear.
“For sure we are going to add more solutions.”
Incidentally, I found that comment quite interesting. Is he saying they are looking for solutions in the transfer market or within the squad? Either way, he doesn’t appear fully content with what he has seen.
We move on to our next game now against Celtic on Saturday night at 9pm UK time with some positives to take and a couple good individual performances as the rust continues to fall off.