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Although The London club didn’t completely torpedo their prospects of ending up in the highest eight places of the continental tournament group stage, they performed a targeted blow on their own hopes of automatically qualifying for the knockout stages. Naturally, the good news is that in the short one-year history of the recently revamped competition, securing a place in the top eight isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

The Core Concern: A Predictable Inconsistency

Unfortunately for the club's supporters, the sole predictable element about the Chelsea team is a reliably erratic lack of consistency, which has been much remarked upon since their loss in Bergamo. After seemingly confirming their credentials with an commanding victory of a European giant, and then a bad-tempered draw with a London rival, the team have been stuffed by Leeds, 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, injuries and suspensions aside, the nucleus of his first eleven for games against strong opposition is mostly fixed.

“I think tonight, first XI, we had inside the pitch eight, nine players that featured against Tottenham, they played against Barcelona, they play against Wolves, the Gunners,” he stated. “We had most of the regulars that are the ones consistently selected for these kind of games. So if you see the several alterations that we did from the previous game, it’s a different situation.”

What Comes Next

To have any realistic chance of avoiding the additional knockout round, Chelsea will have to be victorious in their remaining two matches. First up, they welcome the unexpected contenders Pafos, then travel back to Italy to face the Italian title holders, the Neapolitan side.

“We need to win both, otherwise, we try to play the extra round and then go to the next round,” remarked Maresca, whose next appointment is a game against an Everton team whose recent consistency has propelled them to the dizzy heights of seventh in the domestic league.

Other Notes

Notable Comment: “You know, it’s somewhat ironic 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 played golf every week from when I was 10 to 13” – a star striker explained how, had his dad got his way, he could have been on the golf course rather than tearing it up in the Premier League.

Readers' Letters

“So, no wonder Wolves are in such a poor situation. As any regular reader of this email will know, the only effective pre-match protests involve walking 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” – a correspondent.

“I see that a reader 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 surrendered points after leading, I am wondering: could Sheffield be proving that the frequency of appearances in your letters section is inversely related to the value of anything our teams are achieving on the field?” – another fan.