🔗 Share this article The Manager's Constant Rotation Leaves Chelsea Off Balance. Although Chelsea didn’t completely torpedo their chances of finishing in the top eight of the Bigger Cup opening phase, 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 short one-year history of the new and not-necessarily-improved competition, achieving a top-eight finish isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. The Central Concern: A Monotonous Lack of Consistency Unfortunately for the club's supporters, the sole predictable element about the Chelsea team is a reliably erratic inconsistency, which has been much remarked upon since their loss in Italy. After seemingly confirming their credentials with an impressive beat-down of Barcelona, and then a feisty stalemate with Arsenal, Chelsea have been defeated by Leeds, 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 selection policy that appears to see Enzo Maresca rotate his team incessantly, the Chelsea head coach insists that, knack and naughty step permitting, the core of his starting lineup for games against strong opposition is mostly fixed. “In my view tonight, first XI, we had inside the pitch eight, nine players that featured against Spurs, they played against Barcelona, they played against Wolves, Arsenal,” he droned. “We had most of the regulars that are the ones playing every time for these kind of games. So if you look at the several alterations that we did compared to previous game, it’s different.” The Path Forward For a genuine opportunity of avoiding the additional knockout round, Chelsea will have to win their remaining two matches. First up, they welcome the unexpected contenders a Cypriot team, before heading back to the continent to face the Serie A champions, Napoli. “Victories in both are required, if not, we try to play the playoff and then progress to the following stage,” remarked the Italian coach, whose following fixture is a game against an Merseyside team whose current form has propelled them to the dizzy heights of the top half in the domestic league. Side Stories Quote of the Day: “You know, 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 pushed 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 scoring goals in the top flight. Readers' Letters “Well, no wonder Wolverhampton Wanderers are in such a poor situation. As any regular reader of this email will know, the only good pre-match protests involve walking from a public house that the supporters intended to visit anyway, to the stadium 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” – one reader. “I note that one correspondent not only got the previous letter o’ the day, but also a mention in another reader's letter. On a night where both Sheffield teams once more surrendered points after leading, I am wondering: could Sheffield be proving that the regularity of representation in your mailbag is inversely proportional to the value of anything our teams are accomplishing on the field?” – a different supporter.