Maresca's Relentless Lineup Shuffling Has Chelsea Off Balance.

Although The Blues didn’t completely torpedo their prospects of finishing in the highest eight places of the continental tournament opening phase, they performed a targeted blow on their own chances of waltzing straight into the round of 16. Of course, the silver lining is that in the short one-year history of the recently revamped tournament, achieving a place in the top eight isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

The Core Problem: A Monotonous Inconsistency

Sadly for the club's supporters, the only consistent thing about Enzo Maresca’s side is a monotonously predictable lack of consistency, which has been widely discussed following their defeat in Bergamo. Since apparently rubber-stamping their quality with an impressive beat-down of a European giant, followed by a feisty stalemate with a London rival, Chelsea have been stuffed by Leeds, played out a snoozy stalemate at Bournemouth and have now lost against a mid-table side from Italy's top flight.

Although pundits have been quick to lay the blame on a selection policy that seems to see Enzo Maresca rotate his team like a kebab shop’s elephant leg of doner meat, the Chelsea head coach insists that, injuries and suspensions aside, the core of his starting lineup for big matches is mostly fixed.

“I think in that game, first XI, we had inside the pitch the majority of the team that featured against Tottenham, they played against Barca, they played against Wolverhampton, Arsenal,” he droned. “We had eight, nine players that are the ones playing every time for these kind of games. So if you look at the five changes that we did from the Bournemouth game, it’s a different situation.”

What Comes Next

To have any realistic chance of escaping the Bigger Cup playoff round, they will have to win their final two group games. First up, they welcome the unexpected contenders Pafos, then travel back to the continent to face the Serie A champions, Napoli.

“We need to win both, if not, we will face the playoff and then go to the following stage,” sniffed the Italian coach, whose following fixture is a game against an Merseyside team whose current form has taken to them to the dizzy heights of seventh in the Premier League.

Other Notes

Notable Comment: “You know, it’s somewhat ironic because his greatest wish was me turning pro in golf. That was his biggest dream. So when I was 10, he forced me to take up golf. So I played golf every week from when I was 10 to 13” – a star striker explained how, had his dad got his way, he could have been on the golf course rather than tearing it up 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 public house that the supporters planned to be at anyway, to the ground 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 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 clubs from Sheffield once more dropped points after leading, I am wondering: could Sheffield be proving that the regularity of representation in your letters section is inversely related to the value of anything our teams are achieving on the field?” – a different supporter.