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Tom Hamilton, Senior Writer
Enzo Maresca is adamant Chelsea are on the verge of knocking over one of their title rivals after seeing his side draw 1-1 with Arsenal at Stamford Bridge on Sunday.
Chelsea are third in the Premier League, and had Pedro Neto‘s 70th minute goal to thank for their point against Arsenal after Gabriel Martinelli opened the score for the visitors after 60 minutes.
The result means Chelsea are still waiting for a statement win in the league under Maresca having fallen to defeats to both Manchester City and Liverpool.
But after their 1-1 draw with Arsenal, Maresca is confident Chelsea will soon get the elusive win over those teams at the top of the table.
“I said many times, do you think we deserve to lose to Liverpool? No. Very soon we will win these kinds of games — the performance is important as if you draw tonight and you didn’t play well, you would be happy. But look — Bournemouth away we didn’t deserve to win, and we did. Against Crystal Palace and Nottingham Forest, we deserved to win, and we didn’t. Soon we will win — the performance was good.”
He added: “We are very happy. For me we are behind these kinds of clubs like City and Arsenal as they’ve worked every day with the same manager. We are behind them, but Chelsea is one of the biggest clubs in the world and we need to compete and try to win games. We tried to compete and very soon we will win these kinds of games.”
Chelsea started Cole Palmer after he picked up an injury against Manchester United last weekend after being on the wrong end of a robust challenge from Lisandro Martínez. He was seen limping after the draw with Arsenal, but Maresca allayed any concerns over his fitness ahead of the international break.
“I don’t think we took any risks,” Maresca said. “He was a doubt, but his performance was very good. He’s painful now, but it’s not something important.”
And Maresca said he had no concerns over Noni Madueke‘s reaction after the winger looked angry at being substituted in the 68th minute.
“The problem is when you change a player, they are never happy,” Maresca said. “Probably the only way to be happy is after a hat trick, but it’s not only about Noni, it’s about the players as they want to be there through to the end.
“At that moment [in the match] we saw a different way. We thought Pedro [Neto] with [Jurrien] Timber could be more aggressive — so it was a tactical decision.”