I think hiring Cesc would be premature, as much as I feel he would get the more intangible, cultural aspects of Chelsea that Maresca has often struggled with.My guess is that Maresca has been frustrated as much as we are about incoherent transfer dealings, not addressing gaping holes in the squad and simply lacking experience that other top 4 teams have... If he knows that Guardiola is going, then I don't see how these statements are anything other than trying to provoke the SDs and owners into releasing him at the end of the season in the same way they did Pochetino. He likely knows that the club just simply cannot be seen to have their manager taken by another club, the optics of that would be too damaging and his best bet to get a move to City is to create a tension over these sporting issues enough to secure a move. That tension provides a pretext allows the club to terminate the contract without suffering the embarrasment of having City openly pursue our manager. This is all just speculation of course, but the comments he made were pre-meditated, the ensuing refusal to clarify or back down has created hysteria. And now we have Ornstein running briefs to the media from whomever for whatever agenda they have. Where does this leave us? Looks like we will go back to square 1 in the summer with another manager. As much as clearly the fan base is unconvinced on Maresca himself, there are seemingly no obvious options that employ a similar style of football who are 'ready' for this role. The Club have now put themselves in an incredibly difficult position, either they relent on this pressure created by Maresca and change the sporting policies enough to quiet him or they admit a third failed managerial hire and part ways after two seasons once more for not finding alignment. The pain of that of course is what signal it sends to other top managers when two of our last three coaches have walked out on one of the biggest clubs in the world because the sporting direction has been so incoherent.... When has that ever happened before?

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