As per usual when we’re on this Thursday to Sunday Conference League schedule, Enzo Maresca’s preview of the weekend’s Premier League game came as a brief addendum to the Conference League post-game.
This time around, the coach covered a few interesting topics, and as you’d expect the majority of the focus was on the increasingly tight race for the Champions League places.
The Italian coach repeated his very familiar refrain:
“I’m very confident we can reach the Champions League places,” he said.
“I look at the reality, we have been in the top four all season. Now we have seven games to go and hopefully we can finish where we are.”
We’re not quite sure why he loves to repeat the line that we’ve been in the top 4 all season – that will only make it worse if we end up missing out, not better. The prizes are given out for where you finish, not where you spent the most weeks.
Jackson the crucial missing piece to get Chelsea scoring freely again
Also on the agenda was Nicolas Jackson, who was kept fresh last night. He will be back and hopefully looking sharp on Sunday. We missed him in the first half against Brentford last weekend when we got a disappointing 0-0 draw, and the manager insisted once again on his importance:
“We need to manage Jackson. He’s very important for us, it’s been bad playing games without him. He’s a real threat, off the ball very aggressive. With Nico we are a better team,” Maresca admitted.
Palmer and Noni Madueke played just 45 minutes each last night, Pedro Neto and Jackson 0. Our front four should be ready to fire against a sunken Ipswich team, there can be no excuses on that front.
