🔗 Share this article Maresca's Constant Lineup Shuffling Leaves Chelsea in a Spin. Although The Blues didn’t completely torpedo their prospects of finishing in the highest eight places of the European competition opening phase, they performed a targeted blow on their own chances of strolling directly into the knockout stages. Of course, the silver lining is that in the short one-year history of the recently revamped competition, securing a place in the top eight isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. The Central Concern: A Predictable Inconsistency Unfortunately for the club's supporters, the only consistent thing about Enzo Maresca’s side is a reliably erratic inconsistency, which has been widely discussed since their defeat in Italy. Since seemingly confirming their quality with an commanding victory of Barcelona, followed by a bad-tempered draw with a London rival, Chelsea have been stuffed by a Championship side, played out a snoozy stalemate at the south coast club and have now lost against a mid-table side from Italy's top flight. Although pundits have been eager to point the finger on a team selection approach that seems to see the coach change his lineup constantly, the manager maintains that, knack and naughty step permitting, the core of his starting lineup for big matches is largely set in stone. “I think in that game, starting team, we had inside the pitch the majority of the team that featured against Tottenham, they play against Barca, they play against Wolverhampton, the Gunners,” he droned. “We had eight, nine players that are the ones consistently selected for matches of this magnitude. So if you see the five changes that we did compared to Bournemouth game, it’s a different situation.” What Comes Next For a genuine opportunity of escaping the additional knockout round, Chelsea will have to be victorious in their remaining two matches. First up, they welcome the unexpected contenders a Cypriot team, before heading back to the continent to face the Italian title holders, Napoli. “We need to win both, otherwise, we will face the playoff and then go to the next round,” sniffed the Italian coach, whose following fixture is a match against an Everton team whose current form has taken to them to the dizzy heights of the top half in the domestic league. Side Stories Notable Comment: “It's interesting, it’s somewhat ironic because his biggest dream was me becoming a professional golfer. That was his ultimate ambition. 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” – Erling Haaland explained how, had his dad got his way, he could have been on the golf course rather than scoring goals in the top flight. Readers' Letters “Well, no wonder Wolverhampton Wanderers are in such a poor situation. As any longtime reader of this column 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 a reader not only got Tuesday’s featured letter, but also a name check in a separate letter. On a night where both Sheffield teams once more surrendered points after leading, I am led to ponder: could the city be proving that the frequency of appearances in your mailbag is inversely proportional to the value of anything our teams are achieving on the field?” – another fan.