My mistake — Maresca regrets benching Acheampong for calamity tosin

Speaking ahead of Chelsea's upcoming match against Bournemouth, Maresca addressed the limited playing time for Josh Acheampong, especially in the wake of the Blues' defeat to Leeds.

The young central defender, who is of Ghanaian descent, has found opportunities scarce since early November, with his only recent appearance being a brief substitute role against Barcelona in the UEFA Champions League.

In the match against Leeds, the central defensive pairing consisted of Tosin Adarabioyo and Benoît Badiashile, while Acheampong remained an unused substitute.

Chelsea found themselves trailing after first-half goals from Jaka Bijol and Ao Tanaka. Although Pedro Neto pulled one back for the Blues early in the second half, a defensive error from Tosin allowed Dominic Calvert-Lewin to seal the victory for Leeds.

Maresca expressed some regret over his team selection but clarified that starting Trevoh Chalobah, Tosin, and Badiashile was a deliberate choice to counter Leeds' direct, physical style of attack.

"One of the regrets I have after the game is I didn't play with Josh," Maresca stated, as reported by Football. London.

"The reason why we played with Trev [Chalobah], Tosin and Benoit [Badiashile] is because analysing them, we saw that most of the time they were playing long balls for Calvert-Lewin, for [Felix] Nmecha."

The Italian manager added, "And so we preferred physicality to win aerial duels. But even with that, we lost most of them."

Despite the team's overall struggles in the air, statistics from the match show that Tosin Adarabioyo was dominant in his individual battles, winning a game-high eight aerial duels—two more than Leeds' target man, Calvert-Lewin.