With Enzo Maresca having had the chance of taking a good look at his Chelsea first-team staff in the opening couple of weeks of pre-season training, the Italian can now make informed decisions on what areas need addressing.
The Italian will be under pressure from the get-go, due in no small part to Todd Boehly’s modus operandi.
Players being bought and sold with alarming regularity have become an accepted part of life at Stamford Bridge.
Chelsea make intriguing transfer decision
What that ensures, of course, is a lack of continuity and probably goes some way to explaining why the likes of Graham Potter and Mauricio Pochettino struggled to get any sort of consistency to performance levels and results.
Maresca took the job knowing all of that and will need to deliver immediate success or face the same fate as his predecessors.
One decision he’s made already could have repercussions for No.1 goalkeeper, Robert Sanchez.
The 26-year-old will, apparently, be Maresca’s main man between the posts in 2024/25, but according to The Telegraph (subscription required), the Italian wants the club to bring in another custodian of equal ability in terms of their distribution.
The idea being that the new signing would put immediate pressure on Sanchez to either bring the best out of him or see him demoted to No.2 – as he often had been in the past, Djordje Petrovic given the nod on those occasions.
Having strength in depth is believed to be what all managers desire of their first team, in order that there’s no drop-off in quality should a player be injured or unavailable.
However, the goalkeeping position is generally one where first and second choice are clearly defined.
Those football fans old enough to remember will recall the problems the England national team had when Peter Shilton and Ray Clemence were supposed ‘equals.’
It doesn’t work.
