🔗 Share this article

Although The London club didn't entirely destroy their prospects of ending up in the highest eight places of the European competition group stage, they executed a precise, surgical strike on their own hopes of automatically qualifying for the knockout stages. Of course, the silver lining is that in the brief history of the recently revamped competition, securing a place in the top eight isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

The Core Concern: A Predictable Lack of Consistency

Sadly for the club's supporters, the only consistent thing about Enzo Maresca’s side is a reliably erratic inconsistency, which has been widely discussed since their defeat in Italy. After apparently rubber-stamping their credentials with an commanding victory of Barcelona, followed by a feisty stalemate with Arsenal, the team have been defeated by a Championship side, played out a dull draw at Bournemouth and have now been beaten by a mid-table side from Serie A.

While pundits have been quick to lay the blame on a selection policy that appears to see Enzo Maresca rotate his team like a kebab shop’s elephant leg of doner meat, the manager maintains that, injuries and suspensions aside, the nucleus of his starting lineup for big matches is mostly fixed.

“In my view tonight, starting team, we had on the field the majority of the team that featured against Spurs, they played 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 several alterations that we did from the Bournemouth game, it’s different.”

The Path Forward

For a genuine opportunity of escaping the Bigger Cup playoff round, they will have to win their remaining two matches. First up, they host this season’s surprise package a Cypriot team, before heading back to the continent to face the Italian title holders, the Neapolitan side.

“We need to win both, otherwise, we try to play the extra round and then progress to the following stage,” remarked Maresca, whose next appointment is a match against an Merseyside team whose current form has propelled them to the surprising position of seventh in the Premier 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 forced me to take up 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.

Fan Correspondence

“Well, no wonder Wolves are in such a poor situation. As any regular reader of this column will know, the only effective pre-match protests involve walking from a pub that the supporters intended to visit anyway, to the ground that they were inevitably going to. Just arriving 10 minutes late? That’s how long it takes fans to get to their seats anyway” – one reader.

“I note that a reader not only got Tuesday’s letter o’ the day, but also a mention in another reader's letter. On a night where both Sheffield teams again surrendered points after leading, I am wondering: could Sheffield be proving that the frequency of representation in your mailbag is inversely proportional to the success of anything our teams are achieving on the field?” – a different supporter.