As Villa manager Unai Emery’s changes swung the game in their favour, Maresca’s substitutes made little impact.<\/p>\n
Star attacker Cole Palmer reacted furiously to being taken off in the 72nd minute for 18-year-old Estevao Willian, while the decision to withdraw Marc Cucurella drew criticism – though it was later revealed that the Spaniard had a potential hamstring issue.<\/p>\n
Maresca’s substitutions have faced scrutiny before, notably in defeats with 10 men against Manchester United<\/a> and Brighton<\/a> earlier this season. Atalanta forward Charles De Ketelaere even suggested they “drop” in the second half after his side came from behind to beat Chelsea<\/a> in their Champions League game in Italy earlier this month.<\/p>\n While Maresca’s changes have occasionally worked, it has usually been when resting key players. Against Nottingham Forest<\/a> and Brentford<\/a> in the Premier League and Cardiff City in the Carabao Cup, he rotated heavily but ultimately relied on star players to secure wins.<\/p>\n This has sparked a chicken-and-egg debate: some blame the lack of quality on the fringes of the squad, while others question Maresca’s handling of certain players.<\/p>\n Asked about the issue by BBC Sport, Maresca smiled before replying: “No, I think it’s in general.”<\/p>\n That guarded response came after a defeat defined by substitutes. <\/p>\n Villa’s quintet of Watkins, Amadou Onana, former Chelsea<\/a> loanee Jadon Sancho, Lucas Digne and Lamare Bogarde, had an average age of over 26. <\/p>\n Chelsea<\/a>, meanwhile, made four changes – Estevao Willian, Jamie Gittens, Liam Delap and Malo Gusto – with an average age of under 21.<\/p>\n In terms of attacking impact, Estevao has delivered five goals and an assist since moving to Stamford Bridge, but injury-hit Delap has scored just once, as has Gittens, albeit having also delivered five assists in all competitions.<\/p>\n “It’s probably how we can improve after we concede a goal, to manage the game a little bit better, in terms of experience game after game,” says Maresca.<\/p>\n Chelsea<\/a> rely on youth, and have had minimal impact from their changes in the Premier League this season. <\/p>\n The average age of their starting XI is 24 years and 219 days, while substitutes average 21 years and 349 days – both are the youngest in the league.<\/p>\n Alongside Arsenal<\/a>, Chelsea<\/a> make the earliest changes, averaging their first substitution at 48 minutes, often at half-time. Despite this, their substitutes have contributed only three goals and one assist in the league this season.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As Villa manager Unai Emery’s changes swung the game in their favour, Maresca’s substitutes made little impact. Star…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":341460,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[218,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-341459","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-football","8":"tag-football","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/341459","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=341459"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/341459\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/341460"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=341459"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=341459"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=341459"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}