London is Blue Dispatch #068

After the final whistle, it was hard to tell what emotion Chelsea’s second XI were channeling more – disappointment or disenchantment. After a night that felt like a dream in Greece, this was rolling off the bed and slamming face first onto a stone floor. Did Maresca fail to pick the right side or did his picked side fail him?

In hindsight, playing a weakened/diluted XI against a side aching for immediate revenge may not have been such a wise decision. However, he may have risked murmurs of discontent for benching most of the XI that did the job for him in Greece. In the end, Maresca picked what felt like the more rational choice.

There is, however, a monumental difference between how Gent and Panathinaikos press and how 5 of Newcastle's starting front-six press. Within 30 seconds, the returning Anthony Gordon chased a pass to Badiashile out wide with noxious fury and left a marker on the under-fire Frenchman. Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall fluffed a good chance from the break just 65 seconds in, and Newcastle punched right back, clipping the post from a chance Joelinton should have slotted away with consummate ease.

Newcastle’s attempt to asphyxiate the Blues proved swift and decisive. In the sixty seconds after that Joelinton chance, Gordon tackled Cucurella, Mudryk was robbed off the ball in his own defensive 3^rd & Disasi brought down the marauding Hall for a dangerous freekick.

There were no tactics at fault here. Chelsea’s midfield were outpaced and outfought. Renato Veiga endured his toughest evening since debut by some distance, left floundering in the grass multiple time after trying to recover. After similar issues earlier in the season against Bournemouth, one imagines Maresca may have learnt too late that it is unwise to play the Portuguese international in midfield against PL opposition. Dewsbury-Hall had an anonymous 57-minute outing.

At the back, Disasi & Badiashile continue to play like cheap imitations of their Monaco selves – one scoring an own goal and looking out of sorts, while the other displaying the now frequent loss of focus when a simple pass went under his foot, allowing Gordon to outstrip him for pace as he blitzed towards goal. Filip Jorgensen, the prince that was promised to save us from the GK curse, somehow managed to look shakier than Sanchez. By the time he flicked the ball behind his standing leg on the goalline to send Gordon tumbling into the net, your heart was thumping so furiously you could taste numbers.

Nkunku & Felix looked like members of a two-piece band that don’t speak to each other anymore. Felix continues to be an enigma, a cryptic puzzle no one has figured out how to decipher. Six shots to inflate his statistical output were embodied by consistently trying to headbutt his way through a concrete Newcastle wall. Nkunku’s fortunes were summed up by a shot he took from Mudryk’s cutback that somehow ended up a few yards further back from where he took it. For large spells looked stoic, another possible symptom of a long-term malaise that Maresca needs to address - after scoring a hat-trick against Barrow, his manager benched him for the next game, after a magical winner against Bournemouth he was benched again; what is even the point of playing well if there is no incentive/reward of starting the next game?

On the other hand, this may very well have been the stick Maresca needed to deliver a stern prod to the other sleepwalking performers from the tie. If or when the rotation is less drastic in the FA Cup or in the UECL knockouts and the dropped players ask why, he now has 90 minutes of evidence he can provide without needing to add a single word.

Add to this that after perhaps years, Chelsea have a clean bill of health for the 2^nd week running. This, in a fortnight where Arsenal lost 3 players to injury, and Spurs (Van de Ven), Palace (Wharton & Eze), City (Savinho) and Brighton (Kadioglu) all lost starters in their Carabao Cup ties.

Which is why the best things in the game came from players you didn’t see. Nicolas Jackson and Moises Caicedo, two players who the Blues have no direct depth for, will be well-rested for a feisty, tricky game at Old Trafford. Gusto, Reece James, Cole Palmer all will arrive in (hopefully) pristine condition, with United using multiple starters in their game vs Leicester. If the Blues arrive fresher and faster to register our first win at United for more than a decade, rest assured, memories of a poor display here will be quickly and willingly forgotten.