Former Chelsea midfielder Nevin is concerned the Blues hierarchy won't give the new manager ample time to make the move a success
Leicester City are flying under Maresca
(Image credit: Getty Images)
Enzo Maresca will need at least two years at Stamford Bridge is he's to get Chelsea playing his style of football. That's according to former Blues winger Pat Nevin, who starred for the London club between 1983 and 1988.
Nevin is concerned the new manager, who's joined from Championship winners Leicester City ahead of the new season, won't get the time he needs to turn the squad into winners.
"With the amount of young players in that squad, and the amount of youngsters that will inevitably arrive – from all over the world, by the way, and many of whom won’t have played Premier League football before – I think it’ll take two years for him to really bed his ideas in," Nevin tells FourFourTwo on behalf of NewBettingOffers.co.uk.
Chelsea owner Todd Boehly (Image credit: Adam Davy)
"It would take any coach that long with that sort of squad. But is he going to get that? Who knows?"
Nevin was surprised Chelsea owner Todd Boehly even decided to sack the previous coach, Mauricio Pochettino, after the Argentine steered an inexperienced and hodgepodge squad to a sixth-placed finish.
"At the end of last season – a difficult season in terms of results – I was thinking, ‘OK, hang on, things are starting to look all right!’ And then they sack the coach," says Nevin. "So what we’ve got now is an experiment. It’s one that involves a coach who’ll have no say on the players he’ll be working with next season. It’s unusual."
Ed is a staff writer at FourFourTwo, working across the magazine and website. A German speaker, he’s been working as a football reporter in Berlin since 2015, predominantly covering the Bundesliga and Germany's national team. Favourite FFT features include an exclusive interview with Jude Bellingham following the youngster’s move to Borussia Dortmund in 2020, a history of the Berlin Derby since the fall of the Wall and a celebration of Kevin Keegan’s playing career.
