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While Chelsea didn’t completely torpedo their prospects of finishing in the top eight of the European competition group stage, they executed a targeted blow on their own chances of strolling directly into the knockout stages. Of course, the good news is that in the short one-year history of the recently revamped competition, achieving a top-eight finish isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

The Core Concern: A Monotonous Inconsistency

Sadly for the club's supporters, the only consistent thing about the Chelsea team is a reliably erratic lack of consistency, which has been widely discussed since their defeat in Italy. After apparently rubber-stamping their quality with an impressive beat-down of Barcelona, and then a feisty stalemate with a London rival, Chelsea have been stuffed by a Championship side, played out a dull draw at the south coast club and have now lost against a mid-table side from Italy's top flight.

Although pundits have been eager to point the finger on a team selection approach that appears to see the coach change his lineup incessantly, the manager maintains that, knack and naughty step permitting, the nucleus of his first eleven for games against strong opposition is mostly fixed.

“I think tonight, starting team, we had on the field eight, nine players that featured against Spurs, they play against Barcelona, they play against Wolves, Arsenal,” he stated. “We had eight, nine players that are the ones consistently selected for these kind of games. So if you see the five changes that we did from the previous game, it’s different.”

The Path Forward

To have any realistic chance of escaping the Bigger Cup playoff round, Chelsea will have to win their final two group games. First up, they welcome this season’s surprise package a Cypriot team, before heading back to the continent to face the Serie A champions, Napoli.

“We need to win both, otherwise, we will face the extra round and then progress to the following stage,” sniffed Maresca, whose next appointment is a game against an Everton team whose recent consistency has propelled them to the surprising position of seventh in the Premier League.

Other Notes

Notable Comment: “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 start on golf. So I practiced every week from when I was 10 to 13” – Erling Haaland explained how, had his dad got his way, he could have been teeing off rather than tearing it up in the top flight.

Fan Correspondence

“Well, no wonder Wolverhampton Wanderers are in such a sad state. As any regular reader of this column will know, the only good pre-match protests involve marching from a pub that the supporters planned to be at anyway, to the stadium that they were always 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 Tuesday’s featured letter, but also a mention 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 related to the success of anything our teams are accomplishing on the field?” – another fan.