How Enzo brought calm to the chaos at Chelsea

New boss has improved his players and created a team with a clear identity, just don't let him hear you call them title contenders

- MALIK OUZIA

Enzo Maresca’s mind is not for changing. His Chelsea team may be ahead of schedule, exceeding all preseason expectations, including his own. They may have emerged from this midweek’s fixtures closer than anyone to leaders Liverpool and ahead of champions Manchester City with a third of the season gone. They may have lost only twice, against that pair, and held Arsenal to a 1-1 draw. But what they are not, repeat (and Maresca has) NOT, are title contenders.

Still, there is a compliment in being forced to make the denial. Maresca is probably right. It probably is too soon for the Premier League’s youngest team to compete to win it. But of the predicted top-four players, Chelsea do look the most complete, not inexplicably given their recent spending, but still surprisingly so in the context of what came before. The chaos of two seasons at Stamford Bridge has been replaced by an almost eerie stability. The transition coincided with Maresca’s summer arrival but is a product, too, of a longer-term strategy, one that at times looked ill-defined, but now has begun to bear fruit. The Billion-Pound Bottlejobs are proving their worth.

Energy and style

You have to go back to 2016, Steve Bruce and Hull City for the last time a coach led his team to Championship promotion, then immediately walked away, and if that is not the sexiest precedent, then nor, really, is it one at all. Where Bruce spent the next few months out of work, Maresca jumped straight from Leicester into one of the most high-profile jobs in English football, having not managed in any top-flight division before.