Chelsea manager Enzo Maresca has walked back on his insistance that the Blues do not have a disciplinary problem, now confessing the players need to learn how to avoid meaningless bookings during games.
After Liam Delap picked up Chelsea’s fifth red card of the season so far in the nervy 4–3 win over Wolverhampton Wanderers in the Carabao Cup fourth round midweek, Maresca abandoned his usually calm demeanour in favour of publicly criticising Delap, brandishing his dismissal as “stupid and embarrassing” as he accused the striker of “playing for himself.”
Maresca grouped Delap alongside Malo Gusto and João Pedro, both of whom were sent off earlier this season for two yellow cards, as players who needed to learn how to control themselves on the pitch, highlighting the difference between those dismissals and the straight red cards shown to Robert Sánchez and Trevoh Chalobah for denying goalscoring opportunities.
“If I say that we need to avoid a red card, it’s we need to avoid red card,” Maresca told Friday’s press conference. “I say what I think is correct to say.
“Sometimes we had a red card that was difficult to avoid and sometimes we had some a red card that we could avoid.”
Once again asked whether Chelsea have a squad-wide issue with discipline, Maresca conceded: “I think that some of the red cards that we concede, we can avoid it.
“It’s also something that we need to learn. Something that we have to do better. And for sure, no doubt that in the future we’re going to be better also on that.”
