Enzo Maresca may be looking forward to returning to his old stomping ground on Saturday but he would rather not be there as early as lunchtime.
The Leicester City manager returns to West Brom this weekend, the club where he started his senior career 25 years ago. It is the Italian’s first trip back to the Hawthorns since he left for Juventus in a then-club-record sale of £4.3million in 2000.
He takes his City side there for a big Championship fixture, with the leaders facing the division’s in-form outfit, the Baggies winning five of their last six to jump into the play-off spots. But Maresca is not best pleased that his team are having to play in a 12.30 kick-off after a match on Wednesday night, especially as West Brom have had 24 hours more to recover following their game in Cardiff on Tuesday.
“It’s very difficult, to be honest,” Maresca said at his press conference when asked about getting his team ready to go again. “It is what it is, we need to adapt.
“It’s not something normal to play Wednesday night and then Saturday at 12 o’clock, especially when your opponent play one day before. In a short period, that is a huge difference, 24 hours.
“For sure, when there are so many games, it’s almost impossible to ask the players to play at the same level, the same physicality, the same attention. It’s impossible because they are human beings. But we need to adapt and do the best we can.”
Maresca makes admission in long answer:
Having had a couple of days to analyse the 1-1 draw with Sheffield Wednesday, Maresca was able to give a more detailed answer about the performance than straight after the game. In fact, his assessment was one of his longest answers yet.
He admitted that his side didn’t deserve to win the game, unlike some of those they have lost, while he also felt that they needed to keep the ball for longer than they did. In particular, he mentioned Abdul Fatawu trying shots from long range, with the winger substituted not long after a wild 35-yard effort.
Maresca said: “We lost until today four games: one in the Carabao Cup against Liverpool and then the three in the Championship. I think we didn’t deserve to lose against Hull or Boro. But for sure, we didn’t deserve to win against Sheffield Wednesday. The result was the correct one.
“We had chances and we could have been more clinical, but also it wasn’t our best performance. It’s not about the changes. Pay attention to what we have to do on the ball and off the ball, it’s difficult.
“It was not our best game. We need to improve many things. Probably for me, if we maintained the ball for two minutes, we needed to maintain it for four minutes. We needed more passes, more passes. We needed to tone down their crowd.
“Sometimes we were too quick. Abdul was shooting, as we said before with Kiernan (Dewsbury-Hall), from his house. We need to be calm. But it’s a process. Abdul is 19, he needs to improve.
“If you ask me if we’d prefer two points more, I’d say absolutely. But at the same time, we need to analyse the performance and the draw was correct.”
Maresca to receive cap
Maresca had to be pushed to reminisce about his days at West Brom. At first, he only wanted to talk about the Baggies in their current guise. Then, when thinking back to being 18, his principal memory was of how much hair he had.
As it is his first trip back to the Hawthorns, he will receive a special commemorative cap to mark his time at the club. It’s part of a scheme by West Brom to recognise every player who represented them, with the cap to bear the number in order of their debut.