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While The London club didn’t completely torpedo their hopes of ending up in the highest eight places of the European competition group stage, they performed a targeted blow on their own chances of waltzing straight into the knockout stages. Naturally, the good news is that in the brief history of the new and not-necessarily-improved competition, securing a place in the top eight isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

The Central Concern: A Predictable Lack of Consistency

Unfortunately for the club's supporters, the sole predictable element about Enzo Maresca’s side is a monotonously predictable lack of consistency, which has been much remarked upon following their loss in Italy. Since apparently rubber-stamping their credentials with an impressive beat-down of a European giant, followed by a feisty stalemate with a London rival, 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.

While critics have been eager to point the finger on a selection policy that seems to see the coach 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 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 Barca, they play against Wolves, Arsenal,” he stated. “We had eight, nine players that are the ones playing every time for matches of this magnitude. So if you look at the five changes that we did compared to Bournemouth game, it’s different.”

What Comes Next

To have any realistic chance of avoiding the Bigger Cup playoff round, they will have to win their final two group games. In the first, they welcome the unexpected contenders Pafos, before heading back to the continent to face the Serie A champions, Napoli.

“Victories in both are required, if not, we try to play the extra round and then progress to the next round,” remarked Maresca, whose following fixture is a game against an Everton team whose current form has propelled them to the surprising position of seventh in the domestic league.

Other Notes

Notable Comment: “You know, 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 start on golf. So I played golf every week from when I was 10 to 13” – Erling Haaland explained how, had his dad got his way, he could have been on the golf course rather than scoring goals in the Premier League.

Fan Correspondence

“Well, 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 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 see that a reader not only got Tuesday’s featured letter, but also a name check in a separate letter. On a night where both clubs from Sheffield once more surrendered points after leading, I am led to ponder: could Sheffield be proving that the frequency of representation in your mailbag is inversely proportional to the value of anything our teams are achieving on the field?” – a different supporter.