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Although The London club didn’t completely torpedo their chances of ending up in the highest eight places of the European competition group stage, they performed a targeted blow on their own chances of automatically qualifying for the knockout stages. Naturally, the silver lining is that in the brief history of the new and not-necessarily-improved competition, achieving a top-eight finish may not be as crucial as it seems.

The Central Concern: A Predictable Lack of Consistency

Unfortunately for the club's supporters, the only consistent thing about the Chelsea team is a monotonously predictable lack of consistency, which has been much remarked upon following their loss in Italy. Since apparently rubber-stamping their quality with an impressive beat-down of a European giant, and then a feisty stalemate with Arsenal, Chelsea have been stuffed by Leeds, played out a dull draw at the south coast club and have now been beaten by a average team from Serie A.

Although pundits have been eager to point the finger on a selection policy that appears to see Enzo Maresca change his lineup like a kebab shop’s elephant leg of doner meat, the Chelsea head coach insists that, injuries and suspensions aside, the nucleus of his first eleven for games against strong opposition is largely set in stone.

“In my view tonight, first XI, we had inside the pitch eight, nine players that featured against Spurs, they played against Barcelona, they play against Wolves, Arsenal,” he stated. “There were eight, nine players 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, they will have to be victorious in their final two group games. In the first, they welcome the unexpected contenders a Cypriot team, before heading 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,” remarked Maresca, whose following fixture is a game against an Everton team whose recent consistency has taken to them to the dizzy heights of seventh in the Premier League.

Side Stories

Quote of the Day: “You know, it’s somewhat ironic because his biggest dream was me becoming a professional golfer. That was his biggest dream. 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, had his dad got his way, he could have been on the golf course rather than tearing it up in the Premier League.

Fan Correspondence

“Well, no wonder Wolves are in such a sad state. As any regular reader of this column will know, the only effective pre-match protests involve marching from a pub that the supporters intended to visit 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” – a correspondent.

“I see that one correspondent not only got Tuesday’s featured letter, but also a name check in another reader's letter. On a night where both clubs from Sheffield 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 value of anything our teams are achieving on the field?” – a different supporter.