Chelsea’s team for tonight’s game is out, and there are some really interesting selections from Enzo Maresca.
We expected changes and we got them – a full eleven alterations from the Premier League team. Some were dead certs, but others have raised eyebrows. We all knew Christopher Nkunku would be in there, given he’s on the cusp on the first team. But Maresca has a lot of decisions to make, and some were bound to be puzzling to outsiders.
Cesare Casadei is perhaps the biggest surprise. One would have thought that Carney Chukwuemeka would be ahead of him in the order of priority for minutes, but the Italian, basically forgotten at this point, is selected in Enzo Maresca’s team.
There has been quite a fuss kicked up about Chukwuemeka’s lack of opportunity since his return from injury, and plenty of rumours about other teams being interested. The same hasn’t really been true for Casadei to even close the same degree.
Other alterations that might have made sense
Given Ben Chilwell is back on the bench and is seeing his freeze out ended just like the others named above, we had an inkling that he might play at left back, allowing Renato Veiga to step into midfield. The Portuguese would provide a much better balance alongside Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall and Joao Felix.
Instead, it’s Casadei with KDH and Felix, an incredibly unbalanced setup which will probably only be saved by the opposition’s relative lack of quality. Certainly if we saw that lining up in the Premier League, we’d be very worried.
Still, it’s Barrow at home. We should be able to beat them with a team of left backs if we really wanted. We just want to see some of these rotated players putting in a big effort and getting some valuable minutes to keep the pressure up on those players currently making up Maresca’s standard first eleven.
