In the end, it took one of our Irish colleagues to nip in in the final throes of Enzo Maresca’s pre-match press conference and ensure that said match got even a mention.
From the outset on Wednesday, the media room at Cobham had been rather more crowded than you might expect for a Conference League dead rubber against Shamrock Rovers, a throwback to the very recent days when on-field matters tended to tell you only part of whatever was going on at Chelsea.
Maresca has been strolling eerily close to Easy Street on that front over the past month or two, football the firm narrative focus and the only mild controversies of his own making in impressive public rebukes of Reece James’s leadership and Noni Madueke’s application.
The Italian, though, will have known that another bump in the road could not be too far off, and not merely because news of Mykhailo Mudryk’s positive drugs test will have reached him sooner than it did the public domain.
Mykhailo Mudryk denies knowingly using a banned substance after an ‘adverse finding in a routine urine test’
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From his very first press conference, when the Enzo Fernandez racism storm was topic of the day, Maresca has been left under no illusions as to the diplomatic knack required in his post.
A summer squad cull and the exile of senior players demanded steady management inside and out; navigating reports of boardroom tensions between the club’s two largest shareholders did likewise.
It is testament to the manager that on his watch, nothing yet has crossed the threshold from background noise to genuine distraction.
“[We] convince the players that if we need to solve things outside of the pitch, it’s my job to do it, not their job,” Maresca explained yesterday. “They have to be focused on the game.
“Day by day they have to work hard and try to win games as much as we can. Then the rest is about the club, it’s about me, how to try to solve these kind of problems.”
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Maresca said just about all he could on the Mudryk matter, pledging to support his player and insisting he has total belief in the Ukrainian’s claim that he has never knowingly taken a banned substance. He is also certain that whatever sanction may or may not lie ahead (Mudryk is awaiting the results of a ‘B’ sample), it will not mark the end of the winger’s career.
More immediately, Maresca’s handling of various mini-crises during his six-month reign breeds confidence that the latest will not derail his side’s flourishing campaign.
Mudryk has been a useful option in rotation this season and, by Maresca’s reckoning, had just been getting to grips with the new coach’s demands, having been slower on the uptake than some.
It is testament to Maresca that, on his watch, nothing yet has crossed the threshold from background noise to genuine distraction
Chelsea FC via Getty Images
“He was improving a lot,” Maresca said. “He started to understand which position he has to stay. At the beginning because of his skills he was moving a lot, he was running a lot.”
Harsh, though, as it is to say in the circumstances, there is hardly a senior player on the books that Chelsea are better placed to cope without.
Indeed, they have won five games in a row across competitions without the 23-year-old since the start of the month.
Chelsea are at their strongest in terms of depth out wide, with Jadon Sancho, Pedro Neto and Madueke all in good form and battling for two positions in the first-choice side.
Joao Felix, Cole Palmer and, if required, Christopher Nkunku can all play on the wing, too.
The vast majority of Mudryk’s minutes (850), goals (three) and assists (five) have come in the Conference League which, after Thursday, pauses for Chelsea until the last-16 in March.
By then, assuming they have clarity over Mudryk’s situation and any punishment, the Blues may well have entered the January transfer market to reinforce.
First, though, there is a chance for academy graduate Tyrique George to prove he is ready slot into the £89million man’s place in the Chelsea depth chart.
George, 18, has featured in all five Conference League group games so far and made the Premier League bench for the first time against Brentford on Sunday.
“For sure, Tyrique is going to get minutes,” Maresca added. “We are going to try to help him to improve day by day because now he’s working with us every day, and to allow him to get minutes with us in Premier League.”