Chelsea are off the back of winning their first pre-season friendly of the campaign against Mexican side Club America.
It was a different test for Chelsea and one they thrived in, but things are about to get much tougher now.
The Blues face Manchester City this coming Saturday evening at 10.30pm UK time, and you don’t need me to tell you what a difference this opponent will be. After that, it’s Real Madrid!
City have lost 4-3 to Celtic, 3-2 to AC Milan, and drew 2-2 with Barcelona losing that one on penalties, in their pre-season campaign so far. So really, Chelsea and Maresca are doing better because they have a victory to boast!
Pre-season should never be taken seriously and it is basically training games for match fitness and setting up new systems, welcoming new players, and anything else that needs doing at this point. But as we know, any game against City is never going to be that ‘friendly’ and make no mistake, both sides will want to make a statement here and win the game.
Maresca will be meeting up with old pals from City, one of them being Pep Guardiola, and he will want to show them all how far he has come as a head coach.
City, like Chelsea really, have been without some star players and Pep has also been doing a bit of experimenting and looking at some youngsters with his selections. The difference is that when City miss players, they are missing league champions and we are not, that is just a fact, for now at least.
Maresca and Chelsea will be truly tested on Saturday and there will naturally be concerns about our defence, which to me is going to take the most work to get right.
City will test us with their high and energetic press, and our players will have to stop dallying on the ball at the back. We can certainly hurt City too with our devastating pace in our attack, and the game will be open like Club America, so expect more counter attacking play.
This test comes at a good time though, and we have to go up against the best to really give ourselves a look at what is to come.
But once again, whatever the scoreline or performance from us, nobody needs get carried away either way yet! Let’s save that for maybe ten games into the season and see where we are at.
I’m very intrigued to see how he sets up against City though, onto Saturday!
