Drop Neto, Garnacho, Gittens and Joao Pedro: Rosenior could use revolutionary idea from his assistant | OneFootball

While we’ve already had Liam Rosenior’s first Chelsea team, it was for an FA Cup third round game and was heavily rotated.

His first “first team” selection is little over 24 hours away, and we can’t wait to see what it tells us about his plans for the team. The 3-2-2-3 formation used against Charlton at the weekend was very interesting, and we’re curious if he’s going to repeat that again against Arsenal.

Caretaker boss’s idea could be repeated by new man

Calum McFarlane on the touchline for Chelsea. (Photo by Carl Recine/Getty Images)

There’s also the question of selection. We all expected Estevao to feature against Charlton, but he started as a sub. Does this mean we should expect to see him start against Arsenal? It certainly hints at it.

But there are hints that it won’t happen too – for one, Pedro Neto was also rested for that game. They could both play, after all. But then things would look quite different.

Neto and Estevao would be out wide, with Cole Palmer central. Enzo Fernandez would then be partnering Andrey Santos centrally, with Moises Caicedo suspended.

Joao Pedro would likely be left out, with Liam Delap leading the line.

It works nicely – but what do we do when Caicedo is back? Drop Santos for him? Then we’re just back to the same team that was struggling in Enzo Maresca’s final games.

We’ve been keen to see Santos and Caicedo used together, with Enzo in the ten and Palmer on the right wing. That’s the setup we saw against Fulham a week ago, before Cucurella’s red changed everything. Maybe Calum McFarlane’s legacy will be in that setup.

It will still mean picking between Neto and Estevao… we know who we’re taking.

In other news…

Antoine Semenyo was briefly pursued by Chelsea earlier this month, before they clearly realised a deal with Man City was pretty much already done.

That’s not the only position the Blues are thinking about – according to the same Athletic feature, there are three positions they’re looking to add more quality in the summer.