Maresca's Unceasing Lineup Shuffling Puts Chelsea Off Balance.
While Chelsea didn’t completely torpedo their hopes of ending up in the highest eight places of the Bigger Cup group stage, they performed a targeted blow on their own chances of automatically qualifying for the knockout stages. Naturally, the good news is that in the short one-year history of the new and not-necessarily-improved competition, securing a place in the top eight isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.
The Core Issue: A Predictable Lack of Consistency
Unfortunately for the club's supporters, the sole predictable element about Enzo Maresca’s side is a reliably erratic lack of consistency, which has been much remarked upon following their loss in Italy. After apparently rubber-stamping their quality with an impressive beat-down of a European giant, and then a feisty stalemate with Arsenal, the team have been defeated by a Championship side, played out a snoozy stalemate at the south coast club and have now been beaten by a mid-table side from Italy's top flight.
Although critics have been quick to lay the blame on a team selection approach that seems to see Enzo Maresca rotate his team incessantly, the Chelsea head coach maintains that, injuries and suspensions aside, the core of his first eleven for games against strong opposition is mostly fixed.
“I think tonight, first XI, we had on the field eight, nine players that play against Spurs, they played against Barcelona, they play against Wolverhampton, the Gunners,” he stated. “There were most of the regulars that are the ones consistently selected 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, Chelsea will have to be victorious in their final two group games. In the first, they welcome this season’s surprise package a Cypriot team, before heading back to Italy to face the Serie A champions, Napoli.
“Victories in both are required, if not, we will face the extra round and then go to the following stage,” sniffed the Italian coach, whose next appointment is a game against an Everton team whose current form has propelled them to the surprising position of seventh in the Premier League.
Other Notes
Quote of the Day: “It's interesting, it’s actually funny because his biggest dream was me turning pro in golf. 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” – a star striker revealed how, if his father had his preference, he could have been on the golf course rather than tearing it up in the top flight.
Readers' Letters
“Well, no wonder Wolverhampton Wanderers are in such a sad state. As any regular reader of this email will know, the only good pre-match protests involve marching from a pub 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 a reader not only got Tuesday’s letter o’ the day, but also a name check in another reader's letter. On a night where both Sheffield teams again dropped points after leading, I am led to ponder: could Sheffield be proving that the frequency of representation in your mailbag is inversely proportional to the success of anything our teams are accomplishing on the field?” – a different supporter.
