Enzo Maresca suggested Chelsea are suffering a Club World Cup hangover after Qarabag stopped an English side from winning for the first time in their history.
The statistics say Maresca has made 85 changes in total to his starting line-ups this season and averages up to six tweaks per match – more than any other Premier League manager by comparison.
Maresca was quizzed afterwards on why he yet again made significant changes – seven in total – to his side for this Champions League visit to the Azerbaijan capital of Baku as he relied on three half-time substitutes coming on to ensure they avoided losing this long European trip.
‘The intention was to rest Enzo (Fernandez), to rest Moises (Caicedo), to rest Malo (Gusto), to rest more players, because they are not able to play every three days,’ Maresca said. ‘They need recovery from last season.
‘The Club World Cup affects a lot. We try to rotate. When you win, no one mentions all that. When we don’t win, everyone is focused on that, and now I think it’s important to recover energy for Saturday and go again.
Caicedo was unable to be rested as Chelsea’s overworked midfield general had to replace Romeo Lavia after only eight minutes, while Fernandez was needed as a half-time substitute when Chelsea were trailing 2-1.
Enzo Maresca has pointed to the summer’s Club World Cup for Chelsea’s failure to beat Qarabag in the Champions League
The Blues won the trophy in the summer but it meant they had a lack of preparation for the current season
On Lavia, whose Blues career has been plagued by muscular problems, Maresca said: ‘It’s a shame for him. He is not able to be fit for a long, long period. We will see now as it’s too early to understand what kind of injury. Hopefully it’s not a big injury.’
On the game itself, he added: ‘The big difference today for me was inside the box. The goal we conceded, they are silly goals for me. In their box, for the amount of times that we arrived, we have not been clinical enough. So this is the big difference for me.’
Chelsea will take on relegation-threatened Wolves in the Premier League next after learning harshly here that there are no free passes in the Champions League, especially when struggling with the challenges of rotation.
