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It's the 46th minute at the Cardiff City Stadium and Chelsea are in deep, deep trouble, they trail by a goal to a member of the Premier League bottom three, thanks to Victor Camarasa's strike.

What went wrong?

Whilst Maurizio Sarri's Blues were hardly covering themselves in glory in defence again, the backline couldn't be completely blamed for the way the match was embarrassingly panning out.

In the first half, the West Londoners had offered virtually nothing going forward and quite frankly, scarcely deserved to be level at half-time.

This was down to a complete dearth of creativity and intent in the Chelsea attack, which was predominantly uninspiringly comprised of an ageing Pedro, loanee Gonzalo Higuain and the out-of-form Willian.

In that first period, they managed zero shots on target for their whopping 73 per cent possession, simply not good enough. It was no surprise that the underdogs hit the front so early in the second half.

Who needed to start for Chelsea to avoid this near-disaster?

In the end, a series of changes from Sarri after the break led to the visitors leaving with all three points, scoring a controversial Casar Azpilicueta leveller and added-time Ruben Loftus-Cheek winner.

The Blues had come remarkably close to a disastrous result, one that would have been a monumental blow to their chances of clinching a top-four place.

However, all of this was so unnecessary as had Sarri included some of these players in his starting Xl, his team would have breezed past lowly Cardiff.

In what should be described as a brainless team selection, the Italian opted, as aforementioned, for the likes of underperformers Mateo Kovacic, Jorginho, Pedro and Willian from the start.

This was all while N'Golo Kante, eventual match-winner Loftus-Cheek, Eden Hazard and recent England debutant Callum Hudson-Odoi were sat watching on from the substitutes' bench.

In that dire first period, all the away side needed was someone to take the bull by the horns and to think, they had four stars on the sidelines capable of doing that. If they're fit enough to be in the squad, they're fit enough to play.

With maybe even only two of those four players on the pitch, one would have fancied Chelsea not to get into that mess and Sarri simply can't afford to be stupid enough to leave his best players out for an important league game again, in future.