Enzo Maresca may still be striving for greater “control” of games, and pining for a new No 9 to lead the line, but the Premier League has been offered a reminder of the attacking force already at the Italian’s disposal.
A frenetic occasion at Molineux yielded a first top-flight win for Chelsea’s new head coach, an emphatic victory decorated with a 14-minute, second-half hat-trick from Noni Madueke. The winger, public enemy No 1 in the Black Country after his pre-match post on social media riled the locals, was untouchable after the break as the visitors ran amok.
This was a glorious frenzy of a game. Nicolas Jackson put Maresca’s team ahead inside the opening two minutes with Cole Palmer, who would assist all three of Madueke’s goals, scoring with a wonderful lob before half-time. Even so, Chelsea struggled to contain Wolves in that opening period with Matheus Cunha and Jorgen Strand Larsen twice forcing the hosts level.
Then came Madueke’s masterclass, with a blistering first top-flight win for Maresca to savour capped by the substitutes Pedro Neto and Joao Felix combining for their sixth.
Liam Twomey analyses the key talking points from a frantic contest.
How did Madueke ignite this contest?
It took the Wolves fans at Molineux less than a minute to let Madueke know exactly what they thought of his pre-match assertion on Instagram that “everything about this place is s***”.
Chelsea flighted a high ball out towards Madueke on the right flank from the kick-off and, as he rose to meet it, the boos rained down — swiftly followed by loud chants of “w*****”.
Madueke flashed a quick smile and seemed to use the vitriol as fuel, driving aggressively with the ball at every opportunity, carrying a huge threat every time he was isolated against Rayan Ait-Nouri and testing Jose Sa with several fierce shots in a bright opening spell.
Madueke made an impression on and off the pitch (David Rogers/Getty Images)
Perhaps self-motivation was the intent behind the original Instagram post. There is no doubt that it unnecessarily raised the temperature for his team-mates inside a stadium where Chelsea had not tasted victory since September 2019. Jackson snapped back at the home fans shortly after heading his team into the lead, seemingly in response to the abuse of Madueke.
The result was a cauldron of noise from the very start that upped the intensity of the Wolves pressure, increased the ferocity of their tackles and heightened the chaos of the game.
At times in a breathless first half, it threatened to overwhelm Chelsea but, in the second half, Madueke was there to emphatically solve the problem that he had helped to create. Three times Palmer fed him in space on the right — no Chelsea player had provided three assists in a Premier League game since Cesc Fabregas in 2016 — and three times he beat Sa, once with the aid of a deflection off the outstretched leg of the tormented Ait-Nouri.
What could have been a humbling riposte to online over-exuberance instead became the kind of star-making day that Tammy Abraham enjoyed at this ground five years ago.
Madueke claims his match ball (Shaun Botterill/Getty Images)
Anyone for chaos?
After the expected loss to Manchester City and the anticipated Europa Conference League qualifying win over Servette, this felt like the proper start of Chelsea’s season — in the knowledge that Maresca could ill afford any more lost ground in the Premier League top-four race, particularly given how a poor start doomed Mauricio Pochettino’s team last season.
His players delivered, overcoming some real first-half adversity to outclass Wolves and, in the process, deliver some promising signs that the Italian’s ideas are starting to bed in.
We were told that Marescaball was all about control, and perhaps in time it will be. There were plenty of examples of the new head coach’s work in some of Chelsea’s better attacking sequences, while in other ways this was also an extension of the chaos that defined this team for better and worse last season under Pochettino.
Jose Sa grasps at thin air as Palmer lobs Chelsea back into the lead (Justin Tallis/AFP via Getty Images)
Maresca’s midfield selection, picking Palmer as the right-sided No 8 in the absence of Romeo Lavia (who was sidelined by a minor hamstring issue) provided Chelsea with what might be best described as brittle creativity in the first half, carving Wolves open with incisive possession but also frequently leaving alarmingly large gaps to be exploited on the counter.
It meant an extended first half existed almost purely in a state of scrambling transition, with both teams taking turns to look threatening and vulnerable.
Luckily for Chelsea, Palmer thrives in chaos and produced what might have been the most important moment of the game from the visitors’ perspective, capping a brilliant long kick from Robert Sanchez — there was a suspicion the ball was moving when struck by the goalkeeper — and clever flick from Jackson with a sublime first-time lobbed finish.
Palmer celebrates his goal before clicking into assist mode (David Rogers/Getty Images)
In the second half, it was Chelsea’s ruthlessness as much as anything that allowed them to seize control, exploiting Wolves’ total loss of structural discipline amid a barrage of goals from Madueke and substitute Joao Felix.
There were still enough dicey moments passing from the back from Enzo Fernandez and Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall to underline that this is a work in progress, but also plenty to satisfy Maresca at the end of his first competitive week in the Chelsea job.
1.92 – Wolves accumulated a higher expected goals tally (1.92) than opponents Chelsea (1.56) today, and lost 6-2. Puzzling. pic.twitter.com/EzrHXcmUPw
— OptaJoe (@OptaJoe) August 25, 2024
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In the 80th minute came the £96million ($126.8m) sixth Chelsea goal that might have brought the greatest satisfaction to Clearlake Capital and Todd Boehly.
Neto created a counter-attacking opportunity out of nothing with a lightning burst over the halfway line on the left, Palmer set him running with a measured pass and the rest felt strangely inevitable: the inviting cutback to find Joao Felix, who did not even break stride as he swept a first-time shot into the top corner.
Neto and Joao Felix celebrate Chelsea’s sixth (Justin Tallis/AFP via Getty Images)
Chelsea’s two most recent signings both found plenty of space to exploit as Wolves fell apart in the second half at Molineux, but the abiding impression their contributions created was that Maresca has considerably more attacking firepower at his disposal than Pochettino did this time last year — regardless of whether or not Victor Osimhen arrives before the transfer deadline.
Jackson has already found his scoring touch, Madueke seems determined to make himself integral to this team and Palmer is as effortlessly efficient as ever. Christopher Nkunku, Chelsea’s best performer in pre-season, did not even start this game and is yet to make the mark many predicted he would in these early weeks, while Mykhailo Mudryk still looks lost.
In other circumstances, the Ukrainian being withdrawn after another anonymous 45-minute showing would have been a bigger story. Chelsea had Neto, Joao Felix and Nkunku in reserve and while Maresca’s team will encounter much stiffer defensive resistance than Wolves mustered here, they look better equipped to meet the challenges ahead.
What did Maresca say?
On the team’s display, speaking to the BBC: “I thought the intention in the first half was good but we lost four or five easy balls from set-pieces and counter attacks. The second half was completely different and we didn’t lose any balls and were in control of the game. The tactical plan in the second half was the same but we were a bit more accurate and didn’t give away any easy balls.”
On Madueke’s performance: “In the first 10 minutes he had two chances and overall he was very good. The only thing I didn’t like from Noni is the free-kick he gave away before half-time (from which Larsen equalised) and we can avoid that. Especially against a team who are good from set-pieces.”
Maresca celebrates a fantastic first Premier League win (Chris Lee – Chelsea FC/Chelsea FC via Getty Images)
What next for Chelsea?
Thursday, August 29: Servette (A), Conference League play-off second leg, 7.30pm UK, 2.30pm ET
Chelsea are 2-0 up from last week’s home leg at Stamford Bridge as they seek to secure progress into the group stage proper.
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(Top photo: Darren Walsh/Chelsea FC via Getty Images)
