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Although The London club didn't entirely destroy their chances of finishing in the highest eight places of the continental tournament opening phase, they executed a targeted blow on their own hopes of waltzing straight into the knockout stages. Of course, the silver lining is that in the brief history of the recently revamped tournament, achieving a top-eight finish may not be as crucial as it seems.

The Core Problem: A Monotonous Inconsistency

Sadly for the club's supporters, the sole predictable element about the Chelsea team is a reliably erratic inconsistency, which has been widely discussed following their defeat in Italy. After apparently rubber-stamping their quality with an commanding victory of Barcelona, followed by a bad-tempered draw with Arsenal, the team have been defeated by Leeds, played out a snoozy stalemate at the south coast club and have now been beaten by a mid-table side from Serie A.

While critics have been eager to point the finger on a team selection approach that seems to see Enzo Maresca rotate his team constantly, the Chelsea head coach maintains that, injuries and suspensions aside, the core of his starting lineup for games against strong opposition is largely set in stone.

“I think tonight, first XI, we had inside the pitch the majority of the team that featured against Spurs, they played against Barca, they play against Wolverhampton, Arsenal,” he droned. “There were eight, nine players that are the ones consistently selected for these kind of games. So if you see the five changes that we did from the previous game, it’s different.”

The Path Forward

To have any realistic chance of escaping the Bigger Cup playoff round, Chelsea will have to win their remaining two matches. In the first, they welcome this season’s surprise package a Cypriot team, then travel back to Italy to face the Italian title holders, the Neapolitan side.

“Victories in both are required, if not, we try to play the playoff and then go to the following stage,” remarked Maresca, whose following fixture is a game against an Everton team whose recent consistency has taken to them to the surprising position of the top half in the Premier League.

Side Stories

Quote of the Day: “It's interesting, it’s somewhat ironic because his biggest dream was me turning pro in golf. That was his biggest dream. 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 explained how, had his dad got his way, he could have been on the golf course rather than scoring goals in the top flight.

Readers' Letters

“Well, no wonder Wolverhampton Wanderers are in such a sad state. As any regular reader of this email will know, the only good pre-match protests involve marching from a public house that the supporters planned to be at anyway, to the stadium that they were inevitably going to. Just showing up 10 minutes late? That’s how long it takes fans to get to their seats anyway” – one reader.

“I note that one correspondent not only got the previous letter o’ the day, but also a mention in another reader's letter. On a night where both clubs from Sheffield once more surrendered points after leading, I am wondering: could the city be proving that the regularity of representation in your letters section is inversely proportional to the value of anything our teams are achieving on the field?” – a different supporter.