Chelsea’s team for tonight’s game is out, and there are a few interesting things to note. But it’s largely as we expected.
Enzo Fernandez and Marc Cucurella, first team players up until the last international break, continue to start for the B team, indicating they are still no longer in Enzo Maresca’s Premier League plans.
Utility man Renato Veiga gets shunted into midfield, and that means no room for Cesare Casadei, whose brief sojourn in the second string appears to be over before it really began.
Meanwhile on the bench you’ve got a rare feature for Ben Chilwell and Carney Chukwuemeka, hoping for some minutes. Plus two goalkeepers, which is almost a Chelsea tradition at this point.
But there is one major omission which is raising eyebrows.
Sancho’s slide continues
Jadon Sancho established himself as Maresca’s favoured option on the left wing almost immediately after arriving this summer. But after a quiet showing against Liverpool, Sancho was left out of the Conference League game last midweek, then out of the Sunday game against Newcastle too.
Tonight, he’s not even on the bench. So that will be 3 full games in a row he hasn’t featured in.
Of course the other way of looking at it is that Sancho’s not in tonight’s team because he’s being saved for this weekend. But that’s seems fanciful. The reality is that he’s not only dropped out of the first team – he now can’t get on the bench for the second string either.
Maresca has even been answering questions about him this week, claiming he was dropped for “tactical and technical reasons,” but then admitting to having questions about the winger’s effort levels in training.
Is this the start of the same old story for Sancho?
