Stats

Not just under Maresca, and not just under the current custodians - so many matches Chels don't get started till the 2nd half
Still, great advert for the PL as they say

How can we be getting battered by a team who is missing all their RB and playing a CM kid in Miley at RB and he looks like prime Cafu. Burn injured. Pope injured. This is defo a managerial problem. He is not able to adapt. Pathetic. We should of been targeting that right hand side but no. Embarrassing.  

Everyone wanted Enzo out the team and we have looked awful without him. He needs to come on at H/T and put James into his natural role. Palmer has been awful and a bloody liability too. He has lost almost every dual and defensively is a weak point as he cannot stand Newcastle's press. Absolute horror performance and really could be a lot worse, the scoreline. We almost start every game away from home like this and Maresca does not know how to address it. Pathetic.

Everyone wanted Enzo out the team and we have looked awful without him. He needs to come on at H/T and put James into his natural role. Palmer has been awful and a bloody liability too. He has lost almost every dual and defensively is a weak point as he cannot stand Newcastle's press. Absolute horror performance and really could be a lot worse, the scoreline. We almost start every game away from home like this and Maresca does not know how to address it. Pathetic.

We playing Newcastle at a good time. They have a bit of an injury crisis. Burn, Trippier, Krath, Botman, Lascelles all injured. Hall was not in the squad tonight due to a minor hamstring injury, so Miley played at RB. Livramento went off injured late in second half and had a rookie coming on at LB and Howe just said now that it doesn't look good when a player goes down like that. So assuming he is out weekend. We also have a day's extra rest than they do. 
That is most of their backline injured. Even with Estevao injured, we have players who can hurt them. Just need to not capitulate like we have done in recent seasons at SJP and keep firm against the hostile crowd. Keep 11 on the pitch and hopefully we can pick up a vital points on Saturday. Like I say, a good time to be playing them.

wtf is this obsession with Mainoo? He looked really promising when he suddenly burst into the scene but has been completely irrelevant for ages now and can’t get a game in a horrible United midfield.
If we seriously chose him over Wharton I’m going to lose my mind. Mainoo isn’t better than any of Santos, Essugo, or Lavia. I’d rather take our chances with constantly injured Lavia than throw Man United another bag of cash for a midfielder that doesn’t even play for them.

he has been btter since he flushed that horrid bleach blonde hair down the loo

Chalobah and Fofana have been excellent today. 

I loved these:

Just wanted to say sorry about the erratic times of posting game threads. The last two weeks I have been having a lot of testing done for my second go around with cancer. An added bonus of a 7mm mass in my left lung. So far it is looking like medication and possible chemo to reduce the mass. It has been inconvenient to say the least.

Wesley Fofana will be out for 6 months, an eye lash was found in his eye

Maresca is actually a clown. He left Estevao on bench for the whole game. The game was clearly running away from us and his subs were terrible.

Maresca is actually a clown. He left Estevao on bench for the whole game. The game was clearly running away from us and his subs were terrible.

Maresca is actually a clown. He left Estevao on bench for the whole game. The game was clearly running away from us and his subs were terrible.

Gittens has had some good games lately
his passing is top class at times
 

We are cursed.
Geovany Quenda broke his foot and is out for months.
FFS
So wanted to watch him play against Bayern in 2 hours.

In 2025, following the expiration of the club's sponsorship agreement with Gewiss, the stadium was no longer known officially as the Gewiss Stadium and a new sponsorship deal was signed with sportswear company New Balance.[38]

Tyler Adams is suspended for them. They likely will have Tavernier who is an attacking mid/winger playing at CM. Big bonus for us and we should have a lot of attacking opportunities. I think we will win this.

I think we have a chance of winning the CL this season then winning the PL. 
Doubt we finish outside of top 5, we are much better then last season for that to happen. 
And last night lineup is just that problem that needs to be addressed in the summer. If the board don't do it then the problem is them not the manager. 

Konstantinos Karetsas, the winger adored by Europe’s largest clubs: ‘You see he is a special one, hey?’
https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6833406/2025/12/01/konstantinos-karetsas-interview-transfer/

 
Konstantinos Karetsas does not have the ball, but he is still streaking down the right wing like a wind-up mouse.
It is Greece’s November World Cup qualifier against Scotland, and though the hosts can no longer qualify, Athenians have packed the Georgios Karaiskakis Stadium in pursuit of one player.
Veering infield as Greece’s counter-attack begins to slow, Karetsas picks out a bubble of space on the edge of the area between four Scotland defenders. He holds out both arms, imploringly, and the cut-back is perfectly delivered onto his left foot.
In the Scotland goal, Craig Gordon appears to be expecting Karetsas to shoot back across his body, taking a small shuffle-step to his left. Instead, the Greek winger whips it with his instep, beating a crumpled Gordon at his near post.
It is ball-striking of this purity that has made Karetsas a rare diamond. Having only turned 18 in the middle of last month, the Genk teenager is one of the most promising talents in world football.
“You just have to do whatever comes into your mind,” says Karetsas, speaking to The Athletic in the first in-depth interview of his career, two days before that month’s 3-2 win over Scotland. “You can’t be robotic. When you have a one-vs-one, take your man on — have a shot, get an assist, make a cross. Play a one-two. This is what beautiful football is to me.”
On his debut, eight months earlier, against the same opposition, Karetsas produced arguably an even better finish, opening up his body to curl a left-footed shot high into the roof of the net.
“There ought already to be a blue plaque at Hampden (Park) to mark where Diego Maradona scored his first international goal,” wrote The Scotsman’s chief reporter that night. “Might another ‘I was there’ moment have occurred here when Karetsas curled into the corner first time past a goalkeeper 25 years older than him?”
So, the fact file on Karetsas so far: a right-winger, born in Belgium, who stands just 5ft 7in (170cm) and has a left foot that is cinnamon sweet.
Technique is his strongest arrow, and though his compulsion to dribble may appear a throwback to the 1990s, several other traits are highly modern. He is a dynamo without the ball as well — in November’s game against Scotland, he threw himself in front of an open goal, twice, to block Che Adams’ shot and keep the score 1-0.
The teenager has already been the subject of an international tug of war — having grown up in Belgium, representing the nation’s youth teams, he switched his allegiance to Greece in the spring — and it is moments like these that mean he is already adored by some of Europe’s largest clubs.
Karetsas celebrating his goal against Scotland in their November World Cup qualifierAngelos Tzortzinis/AFP via Getty Images One former academy director of a continental giant texts mid-game: “You see he is a special one, hey?”
Karetsas understands the expectations — and the reality that he may soon be leaving Genk, his hometown club where he became the youngest scorer in the history of Belgian professional football.
“With my dad, we exactly planned out my trajectory,” he explains. “To first break through in Belgium, and then to go to a team either this year or next year, we’ll see. But it’s going as planned.”
Any league in particular? “I don’t have a preference,” he replies. “I think with the right mindset, I can handle anything. If I would have to choose, I would prefer La Liga — but I would go anywhere, to any top club. It just depends on what choice is there at that moment.”
Before speaking, he had recorded six assists in his past four games, numbers made possible, he says, by a significant shift in psychology over recent months. Having burst into the Genk team as a 15-year-old, he was briefly restored to the bench last season.
“I just changed my mindset,” he explains. “From being OK with being average to wanting to be the best. It feels like a big change. I talked a lot with my parents, and also Devon Maes (Genk’s head of performance) and (assistant manager) Michel Ribeiro at the club. He’s a technical coach, but he’s more than that. I’ve known him my whole life. They can speak from experience of difficult moments — of doing everything to get out of that.
“There’s always so much noise around a player coming up, especially if you’re young like this. So you just have to block off that noise and focus on what you want to become as a player and to help the team, which is the most important thing. I’ve been inspired by Michael Jordan. I’m not saying I will achieve what he did, because it’s almost impossible. But it’s about trying to be a better version of yourself every day. Doing everything for your job. I’m obsessed with it.”
Breaking through as a teenager takes more than footballing ability. Listening to Karetsas, the emotional resilience is also clear.
“I think in football you will have maybe 60 per cent bad moments and maybe 40 per cent good moments,” he says at one point. “But the good moments are incomparable to the bad. That’s why in the bad moments, you just have to keep going.”
Later, another thought occurred about the importance of balance in a young player’s life. “I try to separate my life with football. Obviously, I’ll watch the top games like El Clasico or Manchester City vs Liverpool (played a few days earlier). But I’m not going to spend my afternoon doing that. You have to think about other things; I think if you don’t do this, you will not survive, you will go crazy.”
Karetsas says he learned to stay grounded from his parents, whose families moved from Greece to Belgium to work underground in the coal mines near Genk. His father began his career working in construction before working his way up to become a team manager for a company installing paper dispensers in toilet cubicles. His mother worked long hours in a desk job.
“They both made a lot of sacrifices,” Karetsas says. “My father was a good player, but quit football for me and my brother, so we could have everything we needed. My mom is the heart of the house. So I had a really good childhood. I’m really, really grateful, because it’s not normal to have a good childhood. You hear a lot of stories today about kids growing up in difficult moments, and I never had that problem. I had the best parents, so I’m really grateful for that.”
His little brother Yiorgos is also at Genk in the youth academy. “He’s taller, stronger, faster than I was at 12 years old, so I would say he’s better. I hope he becomes so. I would never be jealous of him.”
It is also through his family that he ended up choosing to represent Greece, despite the Belgian youth set-up considering him the standout player in his age group. The Greek FA had dispatched a delegation including former internationals Dimitrios Papadopoulos, Vasilis Torosidis, and Dimitris Salpingidis to visit him in Belgium, but in truth, they need not have bothered. Despite playing for Belgium at the time, Karetsas knew his own mind.
He grew up visiting his ancestral homeland each summer. And Karetsas watched every game of Greece’s Euro 2004 winning campaign, a tournament which took place three years before he was born, over the course of a few weeks with his father.
“Every time I played for Belgium I felt honoured,” he explains. “But there was always a weird feeling because I knew I felt more Greek. So my decision was pure at heart. I love Greece, I travel every year. It’s like my second home. So I’m really grateful for everything Belgium did, but when it comes to the national team, I think you should choose from the heart. Nobody pushed me. It was my choice.”
He is now part of a talented young group of Greek prospects, including PAOK’s Giannis Konstantelias, Olympiacos’ Christos Mouzakitis, and Brighton pair Charalampos Kostoulas and Stefanos Tzimas. While they were too raw to qualify for next summer’s World Cup, their time will come.
As a smaller player, Karetsas says one of his main targets at the moment is improving his physicality. He was a member of the Futures project in Belgium, a scheme which sees the late developers in each age group banded together into a team, still under the FA’s umbrella, in order to improve against more suitable opposition.
“I wasn’t strong like everyone else, I wasn’t fast, I was still small,” he says. “But all the other guys at this age, they were already late into puberty, fully grown, and near their maximum capacity physically. So my body still had to develop and change, because every time in the duels, I would come up short. But technically, everyone knew what I could do — so the Futures project was really good for me.”
Karetsas has been impressing for GenkJohan Eyckens/Belga Mag/Belga/AFP via Getty Images Another target was to improve his end product. Having managed seven assists this season, he appears on the way to meeting that goal — backed up by more advanced metrics.
Compared to other high-volume dribblers in Europe’s top five leagues, Karetsas is amongst the leading players in shot-creating actions — placing him neatly between Savinho and Bukayo Saka. Shown his numbers, Karetsas pores over the numbers with intrigue.
“I get a lot of joy from assisting because I feel I can make my team-mates better,” he says. “If you have a striker who is in a difficult period, you can help them. It’s good for the team, but also for the player, he feels better, and this is a great feeling. Obviously, as an attacking player, nothing beats the feeling of scoring yourself, but to me, assisting is of at least as much value.”
His greatest weapon is his dribbling, holding the ability to easily beat a player one-on-one in order to take them out of the game, before finding the free man. He is determined to never lose that fearlessness.
“Basically, from the time I could walk, I had a ball at the bottom of my feet,” he says. “I was in love with it. And so then my dad always encouraged the dribbling, because he knew those are the most special players, the creative players, and he knew I had that in me. I’d watch videos on YouTube of the big stars — Messi, Ronaldinho, Neymar, the Brazilian Ronaldo, and then go outside to try and be my own person.
“Losing the ball was a fear I had to overcome. A lot of youth coaches told me to stop dribbling, to pass the ball, but my dad said, ‘Never stop’. And so I never did. You know, I’m not afraid to do something on the pitch. If it doesn’t work out three times, and then one time your team scores, nobody will remember the three times. It could be a turning point in the game.
“Players like (Jeremy) Doku, they bring something to the squad which I love. There’s a lot of robotic play nowadays, which I can’t stand. I can’t watch it. You have to be creative. That’s what’s beautiful to see.”

Enzo Maresca on Dário Essugo:
“Essugo is not available for the next THREE games. We need to check him, as he had a setback yesterday.
“Unfortunately, it was just yesterday, so I don’t know how serious it is.” 
(@LloydCanfield)

From the official Premier League channel:
 

Again Maresca was right from the beginning about his role... He is a beast midfielder.

Chelsea will not have Dario Essugo available to cover Moises Caicedo after midfielder suffers setback
https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6856038/2025/12/02/dario-essugo-Chelsea-injury-return/

 
Chelsea midfielder Dario Essugo has been ruled out of three more Premier League games at the very least after suffering a setback in training on Monday.
Essugo, who completed a £18.5million ($24.4m) move from Sporting CP in June, has already been sidelined for over two months due to sustaining a thigh injury while away with Portugal Under-21s.
The 20-year-old underwent surgery to help cure the problem but there was optimism he would soon be available for selection again after training with the senior side for the first time last week.
However, head coach Enzo Maresca has confirmed the player’s return is going to have to wait. “For sure, he is not available for the next three (league) games,” Maresca said at a press conference. “We need to check him. Is it serious? I don’t think so. Unfortunately, it was just yesterday (Monday) so I don’t know (how bad a setback it is).”
What You Should Read Next Chelsea Transfer DealSheet: What to expect in 2026 Chelsea were the Premier League's busiest team in the summer window One of the reasons Chelsea signed Essugo was to help provide cover for Moises Caicedo. The latter is suspended for the league games at Leeds (Wednesday night), Bournemouth (on Saturday) and against Everton on December 15 at Stamford Bridge after being sent off for a bad challenge on Arsenal’s Mikel Merino on Sunday.
Asked about coping without Caicedo, Maresca added: “It’s always harder without Moises, Cole Palmer (played just four times this season) and Levi Colwill (expected to miss most of the season with an anterior cruciate ligament injury in his knee). There are many players. But we will try and find different solutions.”
By Simon Johnson Chelsea Correspondent

Yamal looked nothing amazing against us, but I will still spend plus 100 million if we could get him. 
One game does not define a player. 
That being said I would not mind if we get one of them, BUT not at the cost of blowing our budget on that and negate defense.