The Manager's Constant Lineup Shuffling Puts Chelsea Reeling.

Although The Blues didn't entirely destroy their hopes of ending up in the top eight of the European competition group stage, they executed a targeted blow on their own chances of waltzing straight into the round of 16. Of course, the silver lining is that in the brief history of the new and not-necessarily-improved competition, securing a place in the top eight isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

The Core Issue: A Monotonous Lack of Consistency

Unfortunately for the club's supporters, the sole predictable element about the Chelsea team is a monotonously predictable inconsistency, which has been much remarked upon since their defeat in Bergamo. After seemingly confirming their credentials with an impressive beat-down of Barcelona, followed by a bad-tempered draw with a London rival, Chelsea have been stuffed by Leeds, played out a dull draw at Bournemouth and have now lost against a average team from Italy's top flight.

Although pundits have been quick to lay the blame on a selection policy that appears to see the coach rotate his team incessantly, the manager insists that, injuries and suspensions aside, the nucleus of his starting lineup for big matches is largely set in stone.

“In my view tonight, starting team, we had inside the pitch eight, nine players that featured against Tottenham, they play against Barcelona, they played against Wolves, the Gunners,” he stated. “There were eight, nine players that are the ones consistently selected for matches of this magnitude. So if you see the five changes that we did from the Bournemouth game, it’s different.”

What Comes Next

To have any realistic chance of escaping the Bigger Cup playoff round, they will have to be victorious in their final two group games. In the first, they host this season’s surprise package a Cypriot team, then travel back to the continent to face the Serie A champions, the Neapolitan side.

“Victories in both are required, otherwise, we will face the playoff and then progress to the following stage,” sniffed the Italian coach, whose next appointment is a match against an Merseyside team whose current form has propelled them to the dizzy heights of seventh in the domestic league.

Other Notes

Notable Comment: “You know, 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 pushed me to start on golf. So I practiced 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 tearing it up in the Premier League.

Readers' Letters

“So, no wonder Wolves 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 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” – 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 clubs from Sheffield once more surrendered points after leading, I am led to ponder: could the city 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.