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While Chelsea avoided a total demolition of their prospects of ending up in the highest eight places of the continental tournament group stage, they executed a precise, surgical strike on their own hopes of strolling directly into the round of 16. Naturally, the silver lining is that in the short one-year history of the new and not-necessarily-improved tournament, achieving a place in the top eight isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

The Core Problem: A Predictable Inconsistency

Unfortunately for the club's supporters, the only consistent thing about Enzo Maresca’s side is a monotonously predictable lack of consistency, which has been much remarked upon since their defeat in Bergamo. Since apparently rubber-stamping their credentials with an commanding victory of a European giant, and then a feisty stalemate with a London rival, Chelsea have been defeated by Leeds, played out a dull draw at the south coast club and have now been beaten by a average team from Italy's top flight.

While pundits have been eager to point the finger on a selection policy that appears to see the coach change his lineup like a kebab shop’s elephant leg of doner meat, the manager insists that, knack and naughty step permitting, the nucleus of his first eleven for games against strong opposition is mostly fixed.

“In my view tonight, first XI, we had inside the pitch eight, nine players that play against Tottenham, they played against Barcelona, they played against Wolverhampton, Arsenal,” he stated. “There were most of the regulars that are the ones consistently selected for these kind of games. So if you look at the five changes that we did compared to Bournemouth game, it’s a different situation.”

The Path Forward

For a genuine opportunity of escaping the Bigger Cup playoff round, Chelsea will have to win their final two group games. In the first, they host the unexpected contenders a Cypriot team, then travel back to Italy to face the Italian title holders, the Neapolitan side.

“We need to win both, if not, we try to play the extra round and then go to the following stage,” sniffed the Italian coach, whose next appointment is a match against an Everton team whose recent consistency has propelled them to the surprising position of the top half in the Premier League.

Other Notes

Notable Comment: “You know, it’s somewhat ironic because his greatest wish was me becoming a professional golfer. That was his ultimate ambition. So when I was 10, he forced me to take up golf. So I practiced every week from when I was 10 to 13” – Erling Haaland revealed how, had his dad got his way, he could have been on the golf course rather than tearing it up in the top flight.

Readers' Letters

“So, no wonder Wolverhampton Wanderers are in such a poor situation. As any longtime reader of this column will know, the only effective pre-match protests involve marching from a public house that the supporters planned to be at anyway, to the stadium that they were always going to. Just arriving 10 minutes late? That’s how long it takes fans to get to their seats anyway” – a correspondent.

“I see that one correspondent not only got Tuesday’s letter o’ the day, but also a mention in another reader's letter. On a night where both Sheffield teams again dropped points after leading, I am led to ponder: could Sheffield be proving that the regularity of appearances in your letters section is inversely proportional to the value of anything our teams are accomplishing on the field?” – another fan.