Alan Shearer and Gary Lineker believe Chelsea head coach Enzo Maresca is responsible for the 3-1 defeat at Leeds for how he set up his back four.
The Blues were surprisingly beaten by the promoted side at Elland Road on Wednesday in a significant blow to their Premier League title hopes.
Chelsea haven fallen to fourth in the table after the result and are now nine points behind top-flight leaders Arsenal with 14 games played this term.
For the clash against Leeds, Chelsea boss Maresca made five changes to his starting line-up from the 1-1 home draw against Arsenal on Sunday.
Two changes came in defence with Tosin Adarabioyo and Benoit Badiashile brought in for the absent Wesley Fofana and the benched Malo Gusto while Trevoh Chalobah was moved from centre-back to right-back.
Get your football fix
Punchy analysis, transfer talk and more from Metro’s football experts sent straight to your inbox – sign up, it’s an open goal.
Football pundits Shearer and Lineker both feel Maresca made the wrong decision by tinkering too much with his defenders.
‘It’s difficult when you’re changing that many in the back four,’ Shearer said on The Rest Is Football podcast.
‘You know, I always feel there’s [some] systems or positions that should be playing on a regular basis as much as possible, [and] it has to be [with] the back four.
‘When you’re making that many changes with it, and obviously that that’s on him tonight, in terms of he decided to do that, it went against them because they were terrible at the back.’
Lineker added: ‘Maresca made a couple of changes. Obviously I think Fofana was injured because he wasn’t on the bench either.
‘So you lose one central defender and then Chalobah, who has been playing really well with Fofana, was moved to right back.
‘He brought in Adarabioyo and Badiashile and it was a funny thing to do. It didn’t really work out did it?’
Steve Nicol, meanwhile, was dumbfounded by Maresca’s call not to start Pedro Neto and Reece James against Leeds, with both stars benched.
‘How are you expected to keep your standards up when you’re making all these changes?’ he told ESPN.
‘It makes no sense at all. How about you start Reece James and Pedro Neto, and when you see them look as though they are a little bit tired, then you take them off.’
John Terry has urged Maresca to go back to basics and forget about rotating his squad following the damaging defeat against Leeds.
‘What a poor performance that was,’ Terry said. ‘Everything I said about Leeds away is they’re going to be aggressive, the fans are going to be up for it the fans are going to be hostile.
‘You either have to match them or you go and take the sting out of it completely and we certainly didn’t do that in the first half. We showed glimpses in the second half when Neto comes on and gets back in the game at 2-1 but we can’t perform like that.’