Chelsea have been keen to internally blame Maresca for their current struggles, although Mikel told the ‘Obi One Podcast‘ that he believes Todd Boehly and Behdad Eghbali will regret the decision to part ways on New Year’s Day.
He said: “First of all, when the decision to get rid of Enzo Maresca, I said it here first, that it was a big, big mistake from the football club to make that decision, from the owners, from the sporting directors to make that decision. Getting rid of a manager that I think, that I saw us progressing. You know, there was some sort of, you know, us moving in the right direction, the way we played, the philosophy in which we play football and approach
game as well, especially the big games, you know, where I thought we always competed against the big teams.
“And then when the whole thing, the decision, get rid of Enzo Maresca happened, I came on here and I said it, it’s a huge, huge mistake. You can’t get rid of a manager that’s won us two titles. One has the Club World Cup and of course the Conference League.
“I said it was a wrong ground decision to get rid of him. Some of the Chelsea fans were like, no, no, no, no. I think it’s time for him to go. He doesn’t, his substitutions were not good, blah, blah, blah.
“I said, we have to stick with him. And the truth has come out that sometimes when he made the decisions because his hands were tied, there’s people sitting on top of the stands there saying, oh, you need to get rid of, you need to bring Cole Palmer out, you need to make changes, you need to do this, do that. So we didn’t know the full story.
“But then when he got sacked, some of the stories came out. And now it’s a huge, huge mistake. And the club will look back at it and think, we’ve actually, we’ve f—– up here. It was a huge, huge mistake.”
Mikel has also stated that he thinks Chelsea could actually win the Premier League with Maresca in charge. They currently sit 22 points behind league leaders Arsenal.
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