It’s the age-old question. Do you change a winning lineup? Do you play to your strengths as you perceive them, or do you try to anticipate and react to the opponents’ perceived strengths? The answers to those two questions rarely align exactly.
As far as the WAGNH Community’s concerned, the correct answer is to stay with what worked last week and what gave us our best performance yet of the young season. This means the midfield pairing of Moisés Caicedo and Jordan Henderson, and the back three of Levi Colwill, Maxence Lacroix, and Josh Acheampong. There should be no doubt about the front-three of course.
In fact, it’s only at right wing-back where we get a bit of indecision, but a converted Pedro Neto (55%) still holds off the presumed first-choice in Marco Palestra (41%). The summer signing had impressed in preseason but has been hurt ever since. He did come off the bench last week to make his debut, so presumably his first start for Chelsea isn’t too far behind … but maybe not just yet.
3-4-3 / 3-4-2-1 (75%)
Martínez (96%) | Colwill (93%), Lacroix (97%), Acheampong (87%) | Chavarría (81%), Caicedo (99%), Henderson (78%), Neto (55%) | Rogers (99%), Palmer (99%) | João Pedro (97%)
Given the dominance of the starters, the rest did not come close to sniffing a starting spot. Roméo Lavia (24%), Estêvão (16%), Jorrel Hato (10%), and Wesley Fofana (10%) at least reached the double digits.