Enzo Maresca suffered a disappointing defeat at St James’ Park (Picture: Getty Images)

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.’

Cole Palmer was left on the bench as Chelsea fell to defeat (Picture: Getty Images)

Maresca insisted that, while the result was obviously disappointing, he was pretty...