‘The Motivation Is Clear For Everyone’ – Maresca Previews Birmingham
The Foxes welcome Birmingham City to King Power Stadium on Saturday (3pm BST kick-off) aiming to record a second consecutive home success in the Sky Bet Championship and enhance their position towards the top of the table.
Ahead of matchday 40 of this topsy-turvy campaign, Maresca detailed his pre-match thoughts to the assembled media inside the King Power Centre at LCFC Training Ground…
The mentality
Refreshing the squad is never an easy task given the relentless nature of the Championship schedule and the five-day gap between beating Norwich City and facing Birmingham is a welcome one to provide a period of time on the training pitch this week.
“The only thing that we can do is try to be focused on our games,” the Italian said on Friday. “I try to convince myself and the players that the only thing we can be worried about is the games. The rest we don’t control. Even if there is something there, we cannot manage the situation.
“Until today, they show every game that they are just focused on the games and also I have the same feeling day by day in the training sessions that they are just focused on the football side. In the situation we are in, the big motivation is clear for everyone.
“Most of the season, we play every three days. Because we are at the end of the season, it is probably a bit worse. But for everyone now it is more or less the same. Sometimes we think to allow Stephy [Mavididi] or Abdul [Fatawu] to recover a little bit because they are playing every game.
“We put JJ (James Justin) and Yunus [Akgün] on the other side, but the game was almost finished. We have to try and manage them, a little bit the energy, even if it is difficult in this moment because the priority is just game by game.”
A high-pressing structure
Wilfred Ndidi has become a key cog in Maresca’s midfield system, with the Nigerian’s return from injury over the past two games proving vital to collecting three points on Easter Monday.
“We try to press in the opposite side every time,” City’s Manager explained. “I don’t know how many goals we’ve scored [from that], but we miss many chances. The good thing is that every time that you recover the ball, you are very close to the opposite goal.
“We bring many players in higher pressing so we have many players ready to attack. In the same way we work on the ball, we work off the ball in which way we can be aggressive. After Norwich I said because of our central defender, they need to defend 50 metres in behind.
“When you high press, first of all you need to brave, you need to be quick, but we try to manage the situation. I also think everyone is talking about Wilf and we changed his position a little bit but, off the ball, he is helping us a little bit because he is telling them to defend 20 metres in behind and he is defending 20 metres in front, very close to the opposition goal.
“Hopefully we can score some more goals until the end. We mentioned Wilf is playing more forward like an attacking midfielder. Off the ball, it’s a big weapon for us. When we press higher, he helps us to recover the ball higher and we’re closer to the goal.”
Analysis on the Blues
Two points above the relegation zone heading into the weekend’s fixtures, having beaten Preston North End last time out, Birmingham still have work to do in order to preserve their Championship status for next season.
Despite holding the second-highest record for giving the ball away in their defensive third, this is not a statistic that Maresca is concerned about, given the fact that Gary Rowett is now back at the helm at St. Andrew’s and only two games into his tenure.
The 44-year-old explained: “They just changed manager, so these numbers are from the previous manager. The manager that is now in charge is a different one. [Kōji] Miyoshi, [Juninho] Bacuna, [Jay] Stansfield, [Jordan] James - they are all attacking players who are good players.
“It’s difficult especially because, with the new manager, they’ve played two games. QPR away in a line of five, they lost, and Preston at home in a line of four, they won. It’s complicated because, with a new manager, we do not know what they are going to do.
“If you analyse with a line of five, they lost and with a line of four, they won. So you can expect them with a line of four but they could come with a line of five. We’re just going to be ready for both and we’ll see. We prepare for both cases.”