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While The London club didn't entirely destroy their chances of finishing in the highest eight places of the continental tournament group stage, they performed a precise, surgical strike on their own hopes of strolling directly into the round of 16. Naturally, the good news is that in the short one-year history of the recently revamped competition, achieving a place in the top eight may not be as crucial as it seems.

The Core Issue: A Predictable Lack of Consistency

Sadly for the club's supporters, the sole predictable element about the Chelsea team is a monotonously predictable inconsistency, which has been widely discussed following their defeat in Bergamo. After apparently rubber-stamping their credentials with an commanding victory of a European giant, and then a feisty stalemate with Arsenal, the team have been defeated by a Championship side, played out a snoozy stalemate at Bournemouth and have now been beaten by a average team from Serie A.

Although pundits have been quick to lay the blame on a selection policy that appears to see Enzo Maresca rotate his team incessantly, the manager maintains that, knack and naughty step permitting, the nucleus of his starting lineup for big matches is largely set in stone.

“I think tonight, first XI, we had on the field eight, nine players that play against Tottenham, they play against Barcelona, they play against Wolverhampton, Arsenal,” he droned. “We had eight, nine players that are the ones consistently selected for these kind of games. So if you look at the five changes that we did compared to previous game, it’s a different situation.”

The Path Forward

To have any realistic chance of escaping the Bigger Cup playoff round, Chelsea will have to win their remaining two matches. In the first, they host this season’s surprise package Pafos, then travel back to Italy to face the Italian title holders, Napoli.

“We need to win both, otherwise, we try to play the extra round and then go to the following stage,” sniffed Maresca, whose following fixture is a game against an Merseyside team whose current form has propelled them to the surprising position of the top half in the Premier League.

Other Notes

Notable Comment: “It's interesting, it’s somewhat ironic because his greatest wish was me becoming a professional golfer. That was his biggest dream. So when I was 10, he pushed me to take up golf. So I practiced 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 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 walking from a pub that the supporters intended to visit anyway, to the ground 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 see that a reader not only got the previous featured letter, but also a mention in a separate letter. On a night where both clubs from Sheffield again surrendered points after leading, I am led to ponder: could Sheffield be proving that the frequency of representation in your letters section is inversely proportional to the success of anything our teams are achieving on the field?” – a different supporter.