🔗 Share this article The Manager's Constant Lineup Shuffling Has Chelsea Spinning. While The London club didn’t completely torpedo their chances of finishing in the highest eight places of the continental tournament opening phase, they executed a targeted blow on their own chances of strolling directly into the round of 16. Naturally, the good news is that in the brief history of the new and not-necessarily-improved competition, securing a place in the top eight may not be as crucial as it seems. The Core Problem: A Predictable Inconsistency Unfortunately for the club's supporters, the only consistent thing about the Chelsea team is a monotonously predictable inconsistency, which has been much remarked upon since their loss in Bergamo. Since apparently rubber-stamping their credentials with an impressive beat-down of Barcelona, followed by a feisty stalemate with a London rival, Chelsea have been stuffed by Leeds, played out a dull draw at Bournemouth and have now been beaten by a average team from Italy's top flight. While pundits have been eager to point the finger on a selection policy that appears to see Enzo Maresca rotate his team like a kebab shop’s elephant leg of doner meat, the Chelsea head coach insists that, injuries and suspensions aside, the core of his first eleven for big matches is mostly fixed. “In my view tonight, starting team, we had on the field eight, nine players that featured against Tottenham, they play against Barca, they play against Wolves, the Gunners,” 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 from the previous game, it’s different.” What Comes Next To have any realistic chance of avoiding the additional knockout round, they will have to win their remaining two matches. First up, 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, if not, we try to play the extra round and then progress to the following stage,” remarked the Italian coach, whose following fixture is a game against an Everton team whose recent consistency has propelled them to the surprising position of the top half 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 ultimate ambition. So when I was 10, he pushed me to take up 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 sad state. As any regular reader of this column will know, the only good pre-match protests involve marching from a public house that the supporters intended to visit anyway, to the ground that they were always going to. Just arriving 10 minutes late? That’s how long it takes fans to get to their seats anyway” – a correspondent. “I note that a reader 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 again dropped points after leading, I am led to ponder: could Sheffield be proving that the frequency of representation in your letters section is inversely proportional to the success of anything our teams are achieving on the field?” – another fan.