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While The London club didn’t completely torpedo their prospects of ending up in the highest eight places of the European competition opening phase, they executed a precise, surgical strike on their own hopes of automatically qualifying for the round of 16. Of course, the good news is that in the short one-year history of the new and not-necessarily-improved tournament, achieving a top-eight finish isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

The Central Concern: 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 widely discussed following their defeat in Italy. After apparently rubber-stamping their quality with an commanding victory of Barcelona, and then a feisty stalemate with Arsenal, Chelsea have been defeated by Leeds, played out a dull draw at Bournemouth and have now been beaten by a mid-table side from Italy's top flight.

Although critics have been quick to lay the blame on a selection policy that seems to see Enzo Maresca rotate his team incessantly, the manager maintains that, injuries and suspensions aside, the nucleus of his first eleven for big matches is mostly fixed.

“I think tonight, starting team, we had inside the pitch the majority of the team that play against Tottenham, they played against Barcelona, they played against Wolves, the Gunners,” 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 from the Bournemouth game, it’s different.”

The Path Forward

To have any realistic chance of escaping the Bigger Cup playoff round, Chelsea will have to be victorious in their final two group games. In the first, they welcome this season’s surprise package a Cypriot team, then travel back to the continent to face the Serie A champions, the Neapolitan side.

“We need to win both, otherwise, we try to play the playoff and then go to the next round,” sniffed Maresca, whose following fixture is a match against an Everton team whose current form has taken to them to the dizzy heights of the top half in the domestic league.

Side Stories

Notable Comment: “You know, it’s somewhat ironic because his greatest wish 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” – a star striker revealed how, if his father had his preference, he could have been teeing off rather than scoring goals in the top flight.

Readers' Letters

“Well, 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 public house that the supporters planned to be at anyway, to the stadium that they were always going to. Just showing up 10 minutes late? That’s how long it takes fans to get to their seats anyway” – a correspondent.

“I see that a reader not only got Tuesday’s 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 regularity of appearances in your letters section is inversely proportional to the success of anything our teams are achieving on the field?” – another fan.