Enzo Maresca claims Chelsea were '10 times better' in heavy Celtic defeat

Chelsea manager Enzo Maresca claimed his side showed great improvement in some areas in their 4-1 defeat to Scottish champions Celtic on Saturday night.

The Blues were 2-0 down at half-time after goals from Matt O'Reilly and Kyogo Furuhashi and abject defending saw them concede another two before Christopher Nkunku grabbed a late consolation from the penalty spot

Chelsea had opened their tour of the United States with an eventful 2-2 draw with Wrexham but Maresca said he saw positive developments from that game despite the heavy loss at Notre Dame Stadium in Indiana.

He said: "Off the ball we need to improve things. You can see sometimes we confuse when we need to play short and when we need to play a little bit longer but that is part of the process.

"We maintained a high line but when the ball is not under pressure, you need to drop. We are still confusing some things on the ball and off the ball. It is normal in this moment when we are trying to do something new.

"As we said, the result is always important. For us, we need to analyse the game in general. I think on the ball, the team were ten times better than in the game against Wrexham and that is important because we can see the amount of chances we created first half and second half. The result is always important but in this moment we need to judge and analyse different things. On the ball we created chances, off the ball we probably conceded too much and that is something we need to improve."

Maresca had previously warned fans his side would concede dodgy goals as they attempt to play out from the back and that was the case when Luis Palma netted the third after a defensive mix-up between Robert Sanchez and Benoit Badiashile.

Chelsea will attempt to get their first friendly win of the summer under their belts when they take on Club America in the early hours of Thursday morning.

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