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While Chelsea didn’t completely torpedo their hopes of ending up in the highest eight places of the European competition group stage, they performed a precise, surgical strike on their own chances of automatically qualifying for the knockout stages. Of course, the good news is that in the short one-year history of the new and not-necessarily-improved competition, achieving a top-eight finish isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

The Core Issue: A Predictable Lack of Consistency

Sadly for the club's supporters, the sole predictable element about Enzo Maresca’s side is a monotonously predictable lack of consistency, which has been widely discussed following their loss in Bergamo. After apparently rubber-stamping their credentials with an commanding victory of Barcelona, followed by a bad-tempered draw with Arsenal, Chelsea have been defeated by a Championship side, played out a snoozy stalemate at the south coast club and have now lost against a mid-table side from Italy's top flight.

Although pundits have been quick to lay the blame on a selection policy that appears to see Enzo Maresca rotate his team constantly, the manager maintains that, knack and naughty step permitting, the core of his first eleven for big matches is mostly fixed.

“In my view tonight, first XI, we had on the field eight, nine players that play against Spurs, they play against Barca, they play against Wolves, Arsenal,” he droned. “We had most of the regulars that are the ones consistently selected for these kind of games. So if you see the five changes that we did from the Bournemouth game, it’s a different situation.”

What Comes Next

To have any realistic chance of escaping the Bigger Cup playoff round, Chelsea will have to be victorious in their final two group games. First up, they host the unexpected contenders Pafos, then travel back to Italy to face the Italian title holders, the Neapolitan side.

“Victories in both are required, otherwise, we try to play the extra round and then progress to the following stage,” sniffed Maresca, whose following fixture is a match against an Merseyside team whose recent consistency has taken to them to the dizzy heights of the top half in the domestic league.

Side Stories

Notable Comment: “You know, it’s actually funny because his biggest dream was me turning pro in golf. That was his ultimate ambition. So when I was 10, he pushed 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 teeing off rather than tearing it up in the Premier League.

Readers' Letters

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

“I see that one correspondent not only got the previous featured letter, but also a name check in another reader's letter. On a night where both Sheffield teams once more dropped points after leading, I am wondering: could the city be proving that the frequency of representation in your letters section is inversely proportional to the success of anything our teams are achieving on the field?” – a different supporter.