🔗 Share this article Maresca's Relentless Team Changes Puts Chelsea Spinning. Although Chelsea didn’t completely torpedo their chances of ending up in the top eight of the continental tournament opening phase, they performed a targeted blow on their own hopes of automatically qualifying for the knockout stages. Of course, the good news is that in the brief history of the recently revamped tournament, securing a place in the top eight may not be as crucial as it seems. The Central Concern: A Monotonous Inconsistency Unfortunately for the club's supporters, the sole predictable element about Enzo Maresca’s side is a monotonously predictable inconsistency, which has been much remarked upon following their loss in Bergamo. Since seemingly confirming their credentials with an impressive beat-down of Barcelona, and then a feisty stalemate with a London rival, the team have been defeated by Leeds, played out a snoozy stalemate at the south coast club and have now been beaten by a mid-table side from Italy's top flight. Although pundits have been quick to lay the blame on a selection policy that appears to see Enzo Maresca change his lineup like a kebab shop’s elephant leg of doner meat, the Chelsea head coach insists that, injuries and suspensions aside, the nucleus of his starting lineup for big matches is mostly fixed. “In my view tonight, first XI, we had inside the pitch eight, nine players that play against Tottenham, they play against Barca, they played against Wolves, Arsenal,” he droned. “There were eight, nine players that are the ones playing every time for these kind of games. So if you see the several alterations that we did from the Bournemouth game, it’s different.” The Path Forward For a genuine opportunity of avoiding the additional knockout round, Chelsea will have to win their final two group games. In the first, they welcome this season’s surprise package Pafos, then travel 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 next round,” remarked the Italian coach, whose following fixture is a game against an Merseyside team whose recent consistency has taken to them to the dizzy heights of seventh in the Premier League. Side Stories Quote of the Day: “It's interesting, it’s somewhat ironic because his greatest wish was me becoming a professional golfer. That was his biggest dream. So when I was 10, he forced me to start on golf. So I played golf every week from when I was 10 to 13” – a star striker revealed how, if his father had his preference, he could have been on the golf course rather than tearing it up in the top flight. Readers' Letters “So, no wonder Wolves are in such a poor situation. As any longtime reader of this column will know, the only effective 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 showing up 10 minutes late? That’s how long it takes fans to get to their seats anyway” – a correspondent. “I see that a reader not only got Tuesday’s featured letter, but also a name check in a separate letter. On a night where both clubs from Sheffield once more dropped points after leading, I am wondering: could the city be proving that the regularity of representation in your letters section is inversely proportional to the value of anything our teams are achieving on the field?” – a different supporter.