Injuries, suspensions and bad form force Pochettino into mystery selection | OneFootball

Chelsea’s team for today reads as follows:

Sanchez; Disasi, Colwill, Cucurella, Maatsen; Ugochukwu, Caicedo; Mudryk, Palmer, Chilwell; Jackson.

How that XI will line up, is less clear.

The combination of injuries to so many players, with a suspension for Malo Gusto, along with the need to rest some of our more overused players, means a bit of a juggling act for Mauricio Pochettino.

He’s got a lot of left backs in his squad – and today he’s somehow squeezed 3 of them into his starting team. You’ve just got to laugh.

Perhaps the most obvious setup has Disasi right back, Colwill and Cucurella centre back, Maatsen left back and Chilwell on the left wing.

But there’s also potentially been a formation change – with Disasi, Colwill and Cucurella as centre backs, Chilwell as a left wing back and Maatsen playing on the wrong side as a right wing back.

That’s probably a safer option, but it’s a system we’ve used less of. It may also be considered a mistake to go for a back 5 when we’ve not yet scored a goal in September.