The Blues went down 2-1 to Legia, ending our perfect record in this competition to date, but we still advanced 4-2 on aggregate to book a meeting with Swedish side Djurgarden.

Maresca gave his verdict on tonight’s game, and also assessed the bigger picture and the impact last week’s comfortable victory in Warsaw had.

‘We are for sure not happy with the defeat,’ the head coach started.

‘Probably, after [what happened in] the first leg we tried to manage a little bit the result, rotate players, try to avoid injury, because we have an important game on Sunday.

‘For sure, we’re not happy with the result. We’re in the semi-finals and we were trying to manage after the first leg result there. Overall, the good thing is we could rotate players and we don’t have injuries, which was the main target because during the season we had many injuries in important moments. It’s an important moment now and the good news is we don’t have injuries.’

Maresca made seven changes to the team that started against Ipswich. Two of those to retain their place tonight were Nicolas Jackson and Cole Palmer. The head coach explained why they were selected again shortly before Sunday’s game at Fulham.

‘For Nico, he has been out for more than two months, so the idea to play with him was to build his physical condition a little idea. The plan was 45 minutes.

‘For Cole, he had a small problem before the international break, so the plan for him was to use him for 45 minutes or one hour. The idea was to improve their tempo, and be better for Sunday’s game.

‘The main target for them was to help build their physical condition. If they were able to score, it could be a good boost for them. Hopefully, very soon, Nico and Cole will start to score goals because they are very important for us. At this moment, the one scoring is Cucu and this is a good thing, as he is the one who doesn’t need to score goals.’