Maresca's Relentless Team Changes Puts Chelsea Off Balance.

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 hopes of strolling directly into the round of 16. Of course, the good news is that in the brief history of the new and not-necessarily-improved tournament, achieving a top-eight finish may not be as crucial as it seems.

The Central Concern: A Monotonous Inconsistency

Sadly for the club's supporters, the sole predictable element about the Chelsea team is a monotonously predictable lack of consistency, which has been much remarked upon since their loss in Bergamo. After apparently rubber-stamping their quality with an commanding victory of Barcelona, followed by a feisty stalemate with Arsenal, Chelsea have been defeated by Leeds, played out a snoozy stalemate at Bournemouth and have now lost against a average team from Italy's top flight.

While critics have been eager to point the finger on a selection policy that appears to see the coach rotate his team constantly, the manager insists that, knack and naughty step permitting, the nucleus of his first eleven for big matches is mostly fixed.

“I think in that game, starting team, we had inside the pitch the majority of the team that featured against Tottenham, they played against Barcelona, they played against Wolves, Arsenal,” he stated. “We had most of the regulars that are the ones playing every time for matches of this magnitude. So if you see the five changes that we did from the Bournemouth game, it’s different.”

What Comes Next

To have any realistic chance of escaping the additional knockout round, Chelsea will have to win their remaining two matches. In the first, they welcome this season’s surprise package a Cypriot team, then travel back to the continent to face the Italian title holders, Napoli.

“We need to win both, if not, we will face the playoff and then progress to the next round,” sniffed Maresca, whose following fixture is a game against an Everton team whose current form has propelled them to the dizzy heights of seventh in the domestic league.

Side Stories

Quote of the Day: “It's interesting, it’s somewhat ironic 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” – Erling Haaland explained how, had his dad got his way, he could have been teeing off rather than scoring goals in the Premier League.

Readers' Letters

“Well, no wonder Wolves are in such a poor situation. 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 stadium that they were inevitably going to. Just arriving 10 minutes late? That’s how long it takes fans to get to their seats anyway” – one reader.

“I note that a reader not only got the previous featured letter, but also a name check in a separate letter. On a night where both Sheffield teams once more dropped points after leading, I am led to ponder: could the city be proving that the regularity of representation in your letters section is inversely related to the value of anything our teams are accomplishing on the field?” – another fan.