Maresca's Unceasing Lineup Shuffling Puts Chelsea Reeling.
While The London club didn't entirely destroy their chances of finishing in the highest eight places of the Bigger Cup group stage, they performed a targeted blow on their own chances of waltzing straight into the knockout stages. Of course, the silver lining is that in the brief history of the new and not-necessarily-improved tournament, achieving a place in the top eight isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.
The Central Concern: A Predictable Inconsistency
Sadly for the club's supporters, the only consistent thing about Enzo Maresca’s side is a reliably erratic lack of consistency, which has been widely discussed following their loss in Italy. Since apparently rubber-stamping their credentials with an impressive beat-down of a European giant, followed by a bad-tempered draw with Arsenal, Chelsea have been stuffed by Leeds, played out a snoozy stalemate at the south coast club and have now been beaten by a average team from Serie A.
Although pundits have been quick to lay the blame on a selection policy that seems to see the coach change his lineup incessantly, the Chelsea head coach maintains that, knack and naughty step permitting, the nucleus of his first eleven for games against strong opposition is largely set in stone.
“In my view in that game, first XI, we had on the field the majority of the team that play against Spurs, they played against Barca, they play against Wolves, the Gunners,” he stated. “We had most of the regulars that are the ones playing every time for these kind of games. So if you look at the several alterations that we did compared to previous game, it’s a different situation.”
The Path Forward
To have any realistic chance of avoiding the Bigger Cup playoff round, they will have to be victorious in their final two group games. First up, 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 extra round and then go to the next round,” sniffed the Italian coach, whose following fixture is a game against an Merseyside team whose recent consistency has taken to them to the surprising position of seventh in the domestic league.
Side Stories
Quote of the Day: “It's interesting, it’s actually funny because his greatest wish was me becoming a professional golfer. That was his ultimate ambition. So when I was 10, he pushed me to start on golf. So I practiced every week from when I was 10 to 13” – Erling Haaland explained how, if his father had his preference, he could have been on the golf course rather than scoring goals in the Premier League.
Readers' Letters
“So, no wonder Wolves are in such a poor situation. As any longtime reader of this email will know, the only effective pre-match protests involve marching from a public house that the supporters planned to be at 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 a reader not only got Tuesday’s letter o’ the day, but also a name check in a separate letter. On a night where both Sheffield teams again surrendered points after leading, I am wondering: could Sheffield be proving that the regularity of appearances in your letters section is inversely proportional to the success of anything our teams are achieving on the field?” – a different supporter.
