Blue Is The Colour: Maresca Turns On His Critics After Chelsea Secure Fourth Place

Chelsea players celebrate after their victory at the City Ground saw them clinch Champions League qualification.Photograph: Tom Jenkins/The Guardian

A delighted Enzo Maresca said Chelsea had emphatically answered their critics by qualifying for the Champions League and told those who doubted his team to “eff-off”. A 1-0 victory at Nottingham Forest confirmed Chelsea will play in Europe’s premier competition next campaign and Maresca urged his squad to cap this season by winning the Conference League final on Wednesday.

Chelsea finished fourth in the Premier League after Levi Colwill scored the only goal at the City Ground, jumping ahead of Newcastle, who slipped to a final-day defeat at home to Everton. Maresca, this his first season in charge after joining from Leicester, praised his team – the youngest in Premier League history with an average age of 24 years and 36 days.

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“I didn’t have any doubt about the players,” said the head coach. “The doubt was from outside. All the ones that have the answers or the ones that have the truth, they were saying that we are too young, we are not good enough … They were saying that we were not able to win on this pitch because we are too young, because we are not experienced.

“Unfortunately for them, they have all been wrong. All the ones that have the truth and have the answers to everything. So in English, how do you say? Eff-off to all of them, because the players deserve that. The effort they have been doing is fantastic. Most of the time it [the noise] was from the outside was: we are not good enough, we are too young, we don’t have leaders, blah, blah blah, these kinds of things.

“We are in a business where people judge us because of results. Today, if we were not able to win the game, probably all of you [the media] would judge the season as a disaster. But it was not a disaster.”

Nuno Espírito Santo said his Forest players would deservedly rest after returning to Europe for the first time since 1995-96 while Chelsea’s focus turns to facing Real Betis in Wroclaw on Wednesday. “If we are able to win, I think we can say overall that it has been a very good season,” Maresca said. “I already said that, for me, it was a good season but it can become very good if we are able to get Champions League and hopefully we can win on Wednesday.”