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Although The London club didn't entirely destroy their hopes of ending up in the top eight of the European competition opening phase, they performed a targeted blow on their own chances of strolling directly into the round of 16. Naturally, the silver lining is that in the short one-year history of the recently revamped tournament, securing a top-eight finish isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

The Central Concern: A Predictable Lack of Consistency

Unfortunately for the club's supporters, the sole predictable element about the Chelsea team is a monotonously predictable inconsistency, which has been widely discussed following their defeat in Bergamo. Since apparently rubber-stamping their quality with an impressive beat-down of Barcelona, and then a bad-tempered draw with a London rival, the team have been defeated by a Championship side, played out a dull draw at the south coast club and have now been beaten by a mid-table side from Italy's top flight.

While pundits have been quick to lay the blame on a team selection approach that appears to see Enzo Maresca change his lineup like a kebab shop’s elephant leg of doner meat, the manager maintains that, knack and naughty step permitting, the nucleus of his starting lineup for big matches is mostly fixed.

“In my view in that game, first XI, we had inside the pitch eight, nine players that play against Tottenham, they play against Barcelona, they played against Wolverhampton, 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 several alterations that we did from the Bournemouth game, it’s a different situation.”

The Path Forward

To have any realistic chance of avoiding the additional knockout round, Chelsea will have to win their remaining two matches. In the first, they welcome the unexpected contenders a Cypriot team, 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 go to the next round,” remarked the Italian coach, 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.

Other Notes

Quote of the Day: “You know, it’s actually funny because his biggest dream was me becoming a professional golfer. 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” – a star striker revealed how, if his father had his preference, he could have been teeing off rather than scoring goals in the Premier League.

Fan Correspondence

“So, no wonder Wolves 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 ground 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 note that a reader not only got the previous letter o’ the day, but also a name check in another reader's letter. On a night where both Sheffield teams again surrendered points after leading, I am wondering: could Sheffield be proving that the frequency of representation in your mailbag is inversely proportional to the value of anything our teams are achieving on the field?” – a different supporter.