Maresca's Unceasing Lineup Shuffling Leaves Chelsea Off Balance.
Although The London club didn’t completely torpedo their hopes of finishing in the highest eight places of the Bigger Cup group stage, they performed a precise, surgical strike on their own hopes of strolling directly into the round of 16. Of course, the silver lining is that in the short one-year history of the new and not-necessarily-improved competition, achieving a top-eight finish may not be as crucial as it seems.
The Core Problem: A Predictable Lack of Consistency
Sadly for the club's supporters, the sole predictable element about the Chelsea team is a monotonously predictable inconsistency, which has been much remarked upon following their loss in Bergamo. After apparently rubber-stamping their quality with an impressive beat-down of a European giant, followed by a bad-tempered draw with a London rival, the team have been defeated by Leeds, played out a snoozy stalemate at the south coast club and have now lost against a mid-table side from Serie A.
While pundits have been quick to lay the blame on a selection policy that appears to see Enzo Maresca change his lineup like a kebab shop’s elephant leg of doner meat, the manager insists that, injuries and suspensions aside, the core of his first eleven for games against strong opposition is mostly fixed.
“In my view in that game, starting team, we had on the field the majority of the team that featured against Spurs, they play against Barca, they play against Wolves, Arsenal,” he droned. “We had eight, nine players that are the ones consistently selected for these kind of games. So if you see the several alterations that we did compared to previous game, it’s a different situation.”
The Path Forward
For a genuine opportunity of escaping the additional knockout round, they will have to be victorious in their final two group games. In the first, they welcome this season’s surprise package a Cypriot team, then travel back to the continent to face the Serie A champions, Napoli.
“We need to win both, if not, we try to play the playoff and then go to the following stage,” remarked the Italian coach, whose next appointment is a match against an Everton team whose current form has propelled them to the dizzy heights of the top half in the Premier League.
Other Notes
Quote of the Day: “It's interesting, it’s somewhat ironic because his biggest dream was me becoming a professional golfer. That was his ultimate ambition. So when I was 10, he forced me to start on golf. So I practiced every week from when I was 10 to 13” – Erling Haaland revealed how, had his dad got his way, he could have been on the golf course rather than tearing it up in the top flight.
Fan Correspondence
“Well, no wonder Wolves are in such a poor situation. As any regular reader of this email will know, the only effective pre-match protests involve walking from a public house that the supporters intended to visit anyway, to the ground that they were inevitably going to. Just showing up 10 minutes late? That’s how long it takes fans to get to their seats anyway” – a correspondent.
“I see that one correspondent not only got the previous letter o’ the day, but also a name check in another reader's letter. On a night where both Sheffield teams again surrendered points after leading, I am led to ponder: could the city be proving that the regularity of appearances in your letters section is inversely proportional to the value of anything our teams are accomplishing on the field?” – another fan.
