Analysis: Will Chelsea be Liverpool's biggest title rivals?

Football writer Alex Keble looks at how Enzo Maresca has turned Chelsea into genuine title contenders.

Enzo Maresca insists Chelsea are not in the Premier League title race, but he won’t get away with that line for much longer.

Chelsea are just four points behind leaders Liverpool and only play one of last season’s top 10 across their next seven Premier League matches.

Title race

Position Pos	Club	Played Pl	GD	Points Pts
1	Liverpool LIV	19	+28	46
2	Arsenal ARS	20	+21	40
3	Nott'm Forest NFO	20	+10	40
4	Chelsea CHE	20	+15	36
5	Newcastle NEW	20	+12	35

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Judging on recent performances – on their growing maturity and tactical sophistication – Chelsea can put a sequence together over the festive period and emerge as Liverpool’s biggest rivals.

Since the opening-weekend defeat to Manchester City, Chelsea have won just one point fewer than Liverpool, who beat Chelsea 2-1 in October despite arguably being outplayed by Maresca’s side.

So, Chelsea are closer to Liverpool's standard than it might seem – and they share quite a few similarities with the league leaders.

Like Liverpool with Mohamed Salah, Chelsea have a star in Cole Palmer who can win a match out of nothing.

And like Liverpool with Arne Slot, Chelsea have a tactician in Maresca who is able to blend together just the right amounts of control and disorder.

Maresca's balanced approach

Nobody was surprised by the frenzy that was Tottenham Hotspur 3-4 Chelsea, which shows just how quickly Maresca has changed our perception of him.

Upon arrival, Maresca was billed as a Pep Guardiola-esque manager of suffocating possession football, his love of chess-inspired football at Leicester City that was too dry to be popular even as he won the Championship title.

But at Chelsea, Maresca has embraced the talents of his squad and, like Slot, found a balance between calm possession and organised chaos, allowing his players to attack quickly in the transition but retaining the ball when the game state demands a shift in momentum.

Chelsea top the charts for direct attacks (77) and for shots from fast breaks (29). They rank second for attempted through-balls (43) and are third for progressive carries (336) and successful take-ons (138).

Where Chelsea's attack ranks 24/25

Conversely, they have the fourth most-possession in the Premier League (56.1 per cent) and sit fifth for their number of 10+ open-play passing sequences (212), behind even Manchester United.

Those are relatively high numbers and reflect Chelsea’s dominance of matches, but they are a far cry from the slow possession and meticulous positional play we had expected of Maresca.

Instead, Chelsea are an urgent and vertical team, gladly utilising the space that opens up when the ball is turned over.

As a consequence they are the league’s top scorers (35), have the highest Expected Goals (xG) tally of (32.6) and have created the third-most big chances (40).

Palmer and Jackson benefiting

The greatest beneficiaries are Palmer, who has 11 goals and six assists in 15 Premier League matches, and Nicolas Jackson, who has eight goals and three assists.

The former excels when given space to create and the latter makes piercing runs behind the back line.

These two are connecting brilliantly, although the sheer volume of fast ball-carrying wingers in the team – Jadon Sancho, Noni Madueke and Pedro Neto chief among them – explains why Maresca has adapted his tactics – and why it’s working.

Maresca can also take some credit for Palmer going to the next level this season, because whereas Mauricio Pochettino almost exclusively used him as a right-winger, Maresca often plays Palmer in a No 8 role.

Palmer's heat maps in last two seasons

Sitting the Chelsea No 20 in the middle gives his playmaker more opportunities to create chances, plus Maresca’s tendency to move Palmer between the left and right half-spaces helps Palmer escape attention.

Jackson, meanwhile, has matured considerably under Maresca’s tutelage. His goal involvements have risen from 0.61 per 90 to 0.90 per 90, a rise of 50 per cent.

Maresca’s 3-2-2-3 and midfield tweaks give Chelsea stability

Another reason for Palmer’s growing influence is the tactical foundations that underpin the fast-transition football, because although we are a long way from chess there are some intelligent patterns of play developing.

In most matches, Maresca opts for a 3-2-2-3 formation, a fashionable shape often referred to as a 3-box-3 because of the box shape made from the two No 6s and the two No 8s in front of them.

What makes Chelsea’s special, or at least hard to prepare for and counteract, is Maresca deftly mixing up how the 3-2-2-3 is formed.

Sometimes the right-back inverts into the No 6 role and the two central midfielders become No 8s, as we saw in the first half against Spurs, when Moises Caicedo moved from right-back into the middle and Enzo Fernandez sat next to Palmer at the top of the box.

At other times, the two starting midfielders hold the No 6 space and the left-back moves up to become the No 8 alongside Palmer, as Marc Cucurella did in the second half on Sunday, confusing and confounding the Spurs players.

The win at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium was a neat example of Maresca’s in-game tweaks - but just the latest in a long line.

In the 1-1 draw at Man Utd, Maresca started with right-back Malo Gusto as one of the No 8s and at half-time flipped the whole formation, moving Cucurella into that space and changing the momentum of the match.

In the narrow defeat to Liverpool, he again started with Gusto as one of the No 8s and this time changed it mid-match to put Fernandez here, wresting control of midfield in the second half until Chelsea had the highest pass-completion rate (88.1 per cent) ever recorded by an away side at Anfield in the Premier League.

How Chelsea dominated Liverpool

It’s Maresca’s reconfiguring of central midfield that stands out the most, although he also mixes up the playing style from match to match.

Most notably, in the 4-2 victory against Brighton & Hove Albion, Chelsea (unusually) hit lots of long balls over the top of Fabian Hurzeler’s high line.

In direct contrast, in the draw with Arsenal, Maresca’s side repeatedly refused opportunities to attack directly, recycling the ball to stay safe.

It was the only match this season where Chelsea did not attempt a single through-ball, as they recorded their lowest progressive passing distance (2059 yards) to date.

Variety, detailed coaching, in-game tweaks and embracing a transitional game: Maresca has had an enormous impact already.

Inexperience and frailties to be expected

"Probably Arsenal, City, and Liverpool don’t slide like Cucurella did," Maresca told Sky Sports after the Spurs match.

"So for me, we are not ready, we are far from these teams.”

It was an apt point, because although Arsenal and Man City in particular have made mistakes this season, Chelsea are more prone to outright slips, and Cucurella’s early errors against Spurs were symptomatic of a rawness and occasional disjointedness that can undermine this young team.

Chelsea have made 16 errors leading to a shot, the second-most in the league behind Southampton, and have conceded an xG of 21.97, more than 10 other Premier League clubs.

Questions have been asked about the quality of Chelsea’s goalkeeper and leading centre-back, and it is fair to say they do not possess the equivalent of Alisson Becker and Virgil van Dijk, or Ederson and Ruben Dias.

But of greater significance is Chelsea’s immaturity: their starting XI has an average age of 23 years and 234 days this season, a full two years younger than anyone else.

Youth brings errors, emotional performances, and a lack of title-winning steel when approaching the finishing line.

That’s why the youngest ever Premier League champions were Chelsea in 2004/05, at 25 years and 250 days. If Maresca’s side were to win the title they would shatter Jose Mourinho’s record.

But with Palmer in their ranks, who knows? His Panenka at Spurs was testament to the fearlessness of youth – and a sign that Chelsea may use age to their advantage.

Maresca doesn’t think they’re ready. But you fancy that Palmer and his intrepid, carefree and talented young team-mates have other ideas.