Pre-season: Maresca identifies areas Chelsea need to improve after 4-1 defeat to Celtic

Chelsea boss, Enzo Maresca has identified some of the areas his team need to improve following their 4-1 defeat to Celtic in their pre-season friendly clash on Saturday night.

Celtic defeated the Premier League club at Notre Dame Stadium in Indiana as goals from Matt O’Reily and Kyogo Furuhashi put Brendan Rodgers’ side in front in the first half.

Luis Palma and Mikey Johnston then scored after the break for the Scottish champions before Christopher Nkunku netted a late consolation from the penalty spot for the Blues.

The defeat was Chelsea’s second game of their pre-season campaign after they drew 2-2 with Wrexham a few days ago.

“As we said, the result is always important,” Maresca said after Chelsea’s defeat to Celtic.

“For us, we need to analyse the game in general. I think on the ball, the team were 10 times better than in the game against Wrexham and that is important because we can see the amount of chances we created in the first-half and second-half.

“And off the ball, for sure, we can improve things and you can see sometimes we confuse when we need to play short, a little bit longer. It is part of the process.

“For sure, we need many things to improve off the ball. One of the things we did bad today was when the ball was not under pressure, to maintain the high-line. When the ball is not under pressure, you need to drop.

“We still confuse some things on and off the ball. For me, it’s normal at this moment.”

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