When Moises Caicedo goes down injured it's always a serious scare, but on this night of all nights, it felt much worse. The whole of Stamford Bridge held its breath as he screamed in pain and stayed on the floor.

For a few minutes it looked like the Chelsea midfielder wouldn't be able to continue. He was helped off the field by the physios after not even attempting to hide his discomfort. Clutching at his knee, Chelsea were right to fear the worst.

Other than losing perhaps their most important and irreplaceable player (Cole Palmer is right to warrant a word but Chelsea have attacking depth and severely lack it elsewhere), there was a bigger issue at play. It was here, at the exact moment that Caicedo hit the floor, that some of the underlying worries of the January window were laid bare.

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Chelsea chose against selecting any midfield cover on the bench, for one glaring point. For a team that has seen its soft core regularly exposed in the second half of matches recently, it was a bold call from Maresca.

It's not that his options leapt off the page prior to the game - both of Cesare Casadei and Carney Chukwuemeka are still looking for moves away from the club after being deemed surplus to requirements over the summer. The inclusion of Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall, who is in the same camp as his Conference League-confined teammates, was the biggest shock of the night.

He was only granted this extremely rare opportunity because of a mini injury crisis ruling out Enzo Fernandez and Romeo Lavia. Levi Colwill was also ruled out for the match while Cole Palmer made the cut having missed training over the last week.

Chelsea do have players who could have acted as some sort of backup, though. Sam Rak-Sakyi has started Conference League games and trained with the senior side this week. Kiano Dyer is alongside him as one one of the standout names for the Under-21s side this season.

Even Renato Veiga, out of favour and preferring to play at centre-back, has been used as an auxiliary midfielder. That he was left out shows just how much Chelsea are pushing to complete a transfer. Yet Dewsbury-Hall is surely no more in the thinking, whilst Axel Disasi - another who is likely to move on this month - made an appearance off the bench.

It all paints the picture of something extremely muddled at Chelsea. Just one day after Maresca explained that there were no imminent plans to recall Andrey Santos from his loan at RC Strasbourg, the threadbare midfield was named for a crucial game.

Chelsea can argue that the problems are unforeseen but Lavia has been an injury risk for the club ever since signing in 2023, and it became clear Maresca was not keen on turning to Dewsbury-Hall for anything meaningful as soon as October. Caicedo, signed for £115million, having to be in multiple places at once is nothing new, either, especially not when paired with Fernandez.

Maresca's issue against Wolves was not actually the performance level of Dewsbury-Hall - someone still trying to partially justify his own £30million price tag - who occupied Palmer's normal space in the right pocket with his teammate moved to the left, but just the oceans once more left to Caicedo. In the entire squad, it was chosen that Caicedo would build up once more with Marc Cucurella joining the midfield pivot rather than any of Chelsea's other players.

This has been a common theme at times but the sheer lack of others who are trusted in this spot is telling. For Chelsea, when they needed someone to pop up in the box it was Cucurella rather than a midfield presence. It was he who had to rise to meet some of the first-half Noni Madueke crosses, not a more attacking body.

Then, when Chelsea needed the burst of energy they simply did not have it from midfield. Caicedo was and continues to be running on fumes, whilst Dewsbury-Hall has simply not had the game time to be able to find any sort of sharpness. It is a credit to him that he was able to come up with a crucial flick-on for Marc Cucurella's second-half strike.

The gaps that had begun to open up prior to that were eerily ominous, though. Caicedo was often left with spaces around him until Palmer found an area to snag possession. Going two goals up against the fourth-worst team in the division ought to have been a chance for the Ecuadorian to get a rest, but instead Maresca had nowhere to turn.

Fortunately for Maresca and Chelsea, Caicedo did not have to go off injured in the first half. The goals that came eventually were a reward not for a truly dominant midfield showing but one that didn't get fully punished after things fell off once more.

The lack of options both on the bench and at Cobham mean that really, they couldn't afford to either. It was with tired and heavy legs that Caicedo dragged himself from the pitch in the end.