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Although The London club didn’t completely torpedo their prospects of finishing in the highest eight places of the continental tournament group stage, they performed a targeted blow on their own chances of strolling directly into the round of 16. Naturally, the silver lining is that in the brief history of the recently revamped tournament, securing a place in the top eight isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

The Central Issue: A Predictable Inconsistency

Sadly for Stamford Bridge regulars, the sole predictable element about the Chelsea team is a reliably erratic lack of consistency, which has been much remarked upon following their defeat in Italy. After apparently rubber-stamping their credentials with an impressive beat-down of a European giant, and then a bad-tempered draw with a London rival, Chelsea have been defeated by a Championship side, played out a snoozy stalemate at the south coast club and have now been beaten by a average team from Italy's top flight.

Although critics have been quick to lay the blame on a selection policy that appears to see the coach change his lineup like a kebab shop’s elephant leg of doner meat, the Chelsea head coach insists that, knack and naughty step permitting, the nucleus of his first eleven for big matches is mostly fixed.

“In my view in that game, first XI, we had inside the pitch the majority of the team that play against Spurs, they played against Barca, they play against Wolverhampton, the Gunners,” he droned. “There were eight, nine players that are the ones playing every time for these kind of games. So if you see the several alterations that we did from the previous game, it’s different.”

The Path Forward

For a genuine opportunity of escaping the additional knockout round, Chelsea will have to win their final two group games. First up, they welcome the unexpected contenders a Cypriot team, before heading back to the continent to face the Italian title holders, Napoli.

“Victories in both are required, if not, we will face the extra round and then progress to the next round,” sniffed 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 the top half in the Premier League.

Side Stories

Notable Comment: “It's interesting, it’s actually funny because his greatest wish 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 explained how, had his dad got his way, he could have been on the golf course rather than scoring goals in the Premier League.

Readers' Letters

“Well, no wonder Wolves are in such a sad state. As any longtime reader of this column will know, the only good pre-match protests involve marching from a public house that the supporters planned to be at 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 a reader not only got the previous letter o’ the day, but also a name check in a separate letter. On a night where both clubs from Sheffield once more dropped points after leading, I am wondering: could the city be proving that the regularity of representation in your letters section is inversely related to the success of anything our teams are accomplishing on the field?” – another fan.