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While The London club avoided a total demolition of their chances of finishing in the highest eight places of the European competition group stage, they executed a targeted blow on their own chances of automatically qualifying for the knockout stages. Naturally, the silver lining is that in the short one-year history of the new and not-necessarily-improved tournament, achieving a top-eight finish isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

The Central Concern: A Monotonous Lack of Consistency

Unfortunately for the club's supporters, the only consistent thing about the Chelsea team is a reliably erratic inconsistency, which has been widely discussed following their defeat in Italy. After seemingly confirming their credentials with an impressive beat-down of a European giant, and then a feisty stalemate with Arsenal, Chelsea have been stuffed by a Championship side, played out a dull draw at the south coast club and have now lost against a average team from Serie A.

Although pundits have been quick to lay the blame on a selection policy that appears to see the coach rotate his team constantly, the manager maintains that, knack and naughty step permitting, the nucleus of his starting lineup for big matches is mostly fixed.

“I think in that game, starting team, we had inside the pitch eight, nine players that featured against Tottenham, they play against Barcelona, they play against Wolves, the Gunners,” he stated. “We had eight, nine players that are the ones consistently selected for matches of this magnitude. So if you see the several alterations that we did compared to Bournemouth game, it’s a different situation.”

What Comes Next

For a genuine opportunity of avoiding the Bigger Cup playoff round, they will have to be victorious in their remaining two matches. In the first, they host this season’s surprise package Pafos, then travel back to the continent to face the Serie A champions, the Neapolitan side.

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

Other Notes

Notable Comment: “It's interesting, it’s somewhat ironic because his biggest dream was me becoming a professional golfer. That was his ultimate ambition. So when I was 10, he forced me to start on golf. So I played golf every week from when I was 10 to 13” – a star striker revealed how, had his dad got his way, he could have been teeing off rather than scoring goals in the Premier League.

Fan Correspondence

“Well, no wonder Wolves are in such a poor situation. As any regular reader of this column will know, the only good pre-match protests involve marching from a public house that the supporters intended to visit anyway, to the stadium that they were always going to. Just showing up 10 minutes late? That’s how long it takes fans to get to their seats anyway” – a correspondent.

“I note that a reader not only got Tuesday’s featured letter, but also a name check in another reader's letter. On a night where both Sheffield teams again dropped points after leading, I am wondering: could Sheffield be proving that the frequency of appearances in your mailbag is inversely proportional to the success of anything our teams are achieving on the field?” – another fan.