Enzo Maresca felt there was no need to bring on Cole Palmer on Wednesday night as Chelsea fell to Carabao Cup defeat at Newcastle United.
The Magpies beat the Blues 2-0 at St James’ Park, with Alexander Isak opening the scoring and an Axel Disasi own goal completing a bad night for the west London club.
Newcastle move onto the quarter-finals, where they will take on Brentford, while Maresca will look elsehwere for his first bit of silverware as Chelsea boss.
Seen as the home side was ahead after just 26 minutes, it seemed a little unusual that Maresca made just one substitute over the rest of the contest.
Noni Madueke was brought on in the second half, but Palmer was left on the substitutes’ bench despite clearly being a potent weapon in the manager’s arsenal.
Maresca was asked about why he didn’t call upon the England star, the Italian said it was simply that Joao Felix and Christopher Nkunku looked good, so he didn’t feel that he needed Palmer.
‘No, no, no,’ he said. ‘Simply because I think Joao and Christo were doing very good. The reason why [we brought him] was in case we needed Cole but Joao and Christo were doing well so there was no need to change.’
Maresca insisted that, while the result was obviously disappointing, he was pretty happy with how his team played, dominating possession and firing in 17 shots to Newcastle’s eight.
‘No, I think it worked if we analyse the performance. If we analyse the result, it didn’t work. But I think for 22 or 23 minutes, until their goal, we were in control of the game, we didn’t concede nothing,’ he said.
‘But then after the goal, we lost the control for 10 minutes and then conceded the second one. In the last 10 minutes of the first-half, we had two or three clear chances that unfortunately we didn’t score.
‘In the second-half, we were in control of the game. The most important thing, as we always say, is the result but the performance, we lost the game because of 10 minutes after the first goal and then for the rest, we were quite good.’
The match came shortly after Chelsea beat Newcastle 2-1 in the Premier League on Sunday and Magpies boss Eddie Howe was pleased with how his side responded.
‘You always learn from every game and try to put things into practice in the next match. Playing the same opponent yes, but a very different team, I’m sure they also took things from Sunday for tonight,’ he said.
‘I just felt there was a better feel in our out of possession delivery tonight. We were much better on the details and turning the regains into chances going forwards.
‘Second half it wasn’t an easy game to manage. They were bringing on some good players from the bench to add to the quality they already had on the pitch but I thought we defended really well.’
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