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While The London club didn’t completely torpedo their prospects of ending up in the highest eight places of the continental tournament group stage, they executed a targeted blow on their own chances of waltzing straight into the knockout stages. Of course, the silver lining is that in the brief history of the new and not-necessarily-improved competition, achieving a top-eight finish isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

The Central Problem: A Monotonous Lack of Consistency

Sadly for the club's supporters, the only consistent thing about Enzo Maresca’s side is a monotonously predictable inconsistency, which has been widely discussed since their loss in Italy. Since apparently rubber-stamping their credentials with an impressive beat-down of a European giant, and then a bad-tempered draw with a London rival, Chelsea have been defeated by a Championship side, played out a snoozy stalemate at the south coast club and have now lost against a average team from Serie A.

While critics have been eager to point the finger on a selection policy that appears to see Enzo Maresca change his lineup incessantly, the manager maintains that, knack and naughty step permitting, the nucleus of his starting lineup for games against strong opposition is mostly fixed.

“In my view in that game, starting team, we had inside the pitch eight, nine players that featured against Spurs, they played against Barcelona, they played against Wolverhampton, Arsenal,” he stated. “There were 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 Bournemouth game, it’s a different situation.”

The Path Forward

For a genuine opportunity of escaping the Bigger Cup playoff round, Chelsea will have to be victorious in their final two group games. In the first, they host this season’s surprise package Pafos, before heading back to the continent to face the Serie A champions, Napoli.

“We need to win both, otherwise, we try to play the playoff and then progress to the next round,” sniffed Maresca, whose next appointment is a game against an Merseyside team whose current form has taken to them to the dizzy heights of seventh in the Premier League.

Other Notes

Notable Comment: “It's interesting, it’s actually funny 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 played golf every week from when I was 10 to 13” – a star striker explained how, if his father had his preference, 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 sad state. 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 stadium that they were inevitably going to. Just showing up 10 minutes late? That’s how long it takes fans to get to their seats anyway” – one reader.

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