The Manager's Relentless Team Changes Puts Chelsea Off Balance.

While Chelsea didn’t completely torpedo their chances of finishing in the highest eight places of the continental tournament group stage, they performed a targeted blow on their own hopes of waltzing straight into the knockout stages. Of course, the good news is that in the brief history of the recently revamped competition, achieving a top-eight finish isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

The Core Concern: A Predictable 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 defeat in Italy. Since seemingly confirming their credentials with an impressive beat-down of Barcelona, followed by a feisty stalemate with Arsenal, the team have been stuffed 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 eager to point the finger on a team selection approach that appears to see Enzo Maresca change his lineup like a kebab shop’s elephant leg of doner meat, the Chelsea head coach maintains that, knack and naughty step permitting, the nucleus of his starting lineup 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 play against Barcelona, they play against Wolves, the Gunners,” he droned. “There were most of the regulars 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 previous game, it’s a different situation.”

The Path Forward

To have any realistic chance of escaping the additional knockout round, Chelsea will have to win their final two group games. In the first, they host this season’s surprise package a Cypriot team, before heading back to Italy to face the Italian title holders, Napoli.

“We need to win both, if not, we will face the playoff and then go to the next round,” sniffed Maresca, whose next appointment is a match against an Everton team whose recent consistency has propelled them to the surprising position of the top half in the Premier League.

Other Notes

Notable Comment: “It's interesting, it’s actually funny because his greatest wish was me turning pro in golf. That was his biggest dream. So when I was 10, he pushed me to take up golf. So I played golf 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 tearing it up in the top flight.

Fan Correspondence

“So, no wonder Wolverhampton Wanderers are in such a sad state. As any longtime reader of this column will know, the only good pre-match protests involve marching from a pub that the supporters planned to be at anyway, to the ground that they were always going to. Just showing up 10 minutes late? That’s how long it takes fans to get to their seats anyway” – a correspondent.

“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 again dropped points after leading, I am wondering: could the city be proving that the regularity of appearances in your letters section is inversely related to the value of anything our teams are accomplishing on the field?” – another fan.