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While Chelsea didn’t completely torpedo their prospects of ending up in the highest eight places of the European competition group stage, they executed a targeted blow on their own hopes of automatically qualifying for the knockout stages. Of course, the good news is that in the brief history of the recently revamped competition, securing a place in the top eight may not be as crucial as it seems.

The Core Issue: A Monotonous Lack of Consistency

Sadly for the club's supporters, the sole predictable element about Enzo Maresca’s side is a monotonously predictable lack of consistency, which has been widely discussed following their loss in Italy. Since seemingly confirming their credentials with an impressive beat-down of Barcelona, followed by a feisty stalemate with Arsenal, the team have been defeated by Leeds, played out a snoozy stalemate at Bournemouth 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 seems to see Enzo Maresca change his lineup like a kebab shop’s elephant leg of doner meat, the Chelsea head coach maintains that, knack and naughty step permitting, the nucleus of his first eleven for big matches is largely set in stone.

“I think in that game, first XI, we had on the field eight, nine players that play against Tottenham, they play against Barcelona, they play against Wolverhampton, the Gunners,” he stated. “There were eight, nine players that are the ones playing every time for these kind of games. So if you look at 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, they will have to be victorious in their remaining two matches. In the first, they welcome this season’s surprise package Pafos, before heading back to the continent to face the Serie A champions, the Neapolitan side.

“We need to win both, otherwise, we try to play the extra round and then progress to the following stage,” remarked the Italian coach, whose following fixture is a game against an Merseyside team whose current form has taken to them to the dizzy heights of seventh in the domestic league.

Side Stories

Quote of the Day: “You know, it’s actually funny because his greatest wish was me turning pro in golf. That was his biggest dream. So when I was 10, he forced me to take up golf. So I practiced every week from when I was 10 to 13” – Erling Haaland revealed how, had his dad got his way, he could have been teeing off rather than tearing it up in the top flight.

Fan Correspondence

“So, 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 public house 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” – one reader.

“I see that one correspondent not only got the previous featured letter, but also a mention in a separate letter. On a night where both clubs from Sheffield once more dropped points after leading, I am led to ponder: could Sheffield be proving that the regularity of representation in your letters section is inversely related to the value of anything our teams are achieving on the field?” – another fan.