On 20 July 2023, Chelsea won 5–0 against Wrexham in their first pre-season match in the United States.
Almost exactly a year later, deja vu struck again as The Blues faced Wrexham in the US, but this time they were lucky not to actually be on the other side of defeat. Enzo Maresca would have lost his first game if not for a great late save from Lucas Bergstrom and a neat finish from Lesley Ugochukwu.
Wrexham are a division above us at the same time last year and have experienced another year with the same manager and basically the same squad. We knew they would cause us problems, we knew they would be well organised and we knew they would sit in a deep block to keep Chelsea in deep areas. No matter what level they face, they can be tough to break down.
Another thing I know is that you shouldn’t overreact to pre-season friendlies, especially the first one.
Of course, we all want to see positives and progress as the game progresses, and of course, it would be nice to get a few wins on the board to build momentum. All of that is absolutely important. But it’s also important that we don’t overreact to anything. There will always be fatigue, there will always be sloppy passes, there will always be rust, and Maresca will always need time to implement his system.
Despite conceding two goals and almost losing the game, there were many positives from this game.
After Chelsea scored the first goal, they dominated and used the ball well. After a very slow and cautious possession, Chelsea soon started to move faster with one-touch passes and progressive movements. This was our best time of the game from then until the first half.
As always, we were back to square one at half-time with the change in play and the quality on the pitch was lacking. Wrexham came out of the blocks a bit more and posed more of a threat. They fought and played smart and showed quality in the last third and scored a goal. Chelsea looked lethargic for most of the second half but still had decent possession.
Chelsea had the upper hand with 75% possession and had five more attempts on goal (11) than Wrexham (6). However, Wrexham were more clinical and had better efforts on goal and had one more goal than Chelsea (4).
Chelsea made 767 passes to Wrexham’s 254, and had a passing accuracy of 91% to Wrexham’s 73%. But of course, none of that matters unless the final result produces a positive scoreline, which is always the most important statistic in football.
We have to remember that we still have a lot of key players to come back, so we will see more improvement. After all, we got a draw here, imagine what the collapse would have been like if we had lost!?
This training session was a great time to stretch our legs and prepare for how we’ll be playing the rest of the season.
There were positive and negative aspects, and I am sure Maresca will learn and develop a lot from this incident.
“Overall I’m very happy with the performance,” Maresca said after the game. “We only started two weeks ago and it’s important for us as a staff to see the identity of our team. Tonight it was very clear.
“We will definitely add more solutions.”
However, I found that comment quite interesting. Is he saying he is looking for a solution in the transfer market, or within the squad? Either way, he seems to be dissatisfied with what he has seen.
We now move on to the next game against Celtic on Saturday night at 9pm BST, with some positives and some individual performances showing before the rust sets in.
