The thing that made Enzo Maresca “proud” about recent team selections despite bad results

Enzo Maresca has been speaking to Chelsea’s official website on the subject of Noni Madueke, a player who he has worked on personally to try and help him reach his best.

He dropped him for poor training performance earlier in the season, but never ceases to praise him when given the chance:

“I consider Noni to be one of our best players, to be honest, but because of that we want our best players to be in the right way always. No switching off, no some days that they can drop,” the manager said.

“It is the other way and he is doing very good with us, knowing that during a season it is normal that for some moments players are not 100 per cent. But it is not just about Noni, it is about all the players.”

Madueke is going to start tonight and we certainly need him at 100% to get a result. There simply haven’t been enough goals or creativity from this team in recent games, and we need the winger to provide that down the right.

Academy talent a point of pride for Maresca

Another important feature of tonight’s game will likely be the appearance of Josh Acheampong for his second consecutive Premier League start, showing how much faith Maresca has in him.

He and Levi Colwill will be the two academy players starting, and the manager spoke a little about that in his interview too:

“Absolutely we were proud, first of all because they are from our house, they are from the Academy. That game was a fantastic feeling, to see both of them against Palace. Levi was born in 2003, Josh in 2006, both of them are very young.”

We’re already excited to see how Josh gets on.