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Although The London club avoided a total demolition of their prospects of ending up in the top eight of the European competition group stage, they executed a targeted blow on their own hopes of waltzing straight into the round of 16. Naturally, the good news is that in the short one-year history of the new and not-necessarily-improved tournament, achieving a place in the top eight isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

The Central Issue: A Monotonous Inconsistency

Unfortunately for the club's supporters, the only consistent thing about Enzo Maresca’s side is a reliably erratic lack of consistency, which has been widely discussed since their loss in Italy. Since apparently rubber-stamping their credentials with an impressive beat-down of Barcelona, followed by a feisty stalemate with Arsenal, Chelsea have been defeated by Leeds, played out a snoozy stalemate at the south coast club and have now lost against a mid-table side from Serie A.

While critics have been quick to lay the blame on a selection policy that appears to see the coach rotate his team incessantly, 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.

“I think tonight, first XI, we had inside the pitch eight, nine players that featured against Tottenham, they play against Barcelona, they played against Wolves, the Gunners,” he droned. “We had most of the regulars that are the ones consistently selected for these kind of games. So if you see the five changes that we did from the Bournemouth game, it’s different.”

What Comes Next

To have any realistic chance of avoiding the additional knockout round, Chelsea will have to be victorious in their final two group games. First up, they welcome the unexpected contenders Pafos, before heading back to Italy to face the Italian title holders, Napoli.

“Victories in both are required, otherwise, we will face the extra round and then progress to the following stage,” sniffed the Italian coach, whose next appointment is a game against an Merseyside team whose current form has taken to them to the surprising position of seventh in the domestic league.

Other Notes

Notable Comment: “You know, it’s actually funny because his greatest wish was me turning pro in golf. That was his ultimate ambition. 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 revealed how, if his father had his preference, he could have been on the golf course rather than tearing it up in the top flight.

Readers' Letters

“So, no wonder Wolves are in such a sad state. As any regular reader of this email will know, the only good pre-match protests involve marching from a pub that the supporters planned to be at anyway, to the ground 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 one correspondent not only got the previous letter o’ the day, but also a name check in another reader's letter. On a night where both Sheffield teams again surrendered points after leading, I am wondering: could Sheffield be proving that the regularity of appearances in your letters section is inversely proportional to the value of anything our teams are achieving on the field?” – a different supporter.