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Although The Blues didn't entirely destroy their hopes of finishing in the highest eight places of the European competition group stage, they executed a precise, surgical strike on their own hopes of automatically qualifying for the knockout stages. Of course, the silver lining is that in the brief history of the recently revamped tournament, achieving a top-eight finish isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

The Central Issue: A Predictable Inconsistency

Unfortunately for Stamford Bridge regulars, the only consistent thing about the Chelsea team is a monotonously predictable lack of consistency, which has been much remarked upon since their defeat in Bergamo. 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 dull draw at Bournemouth and have now lost against a average team from Serie A.

While pundits 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 core of his first eleven for games against strong opposition is mostly fixed.

“I think tonight, starting team, we had on the field eight, nine players that play against Spurs, they played against Barcelona, they played against Wolverhampton, Arsenal,” he stated. “We had most of the regulars that are the ones consistently selected for these kind of games. So if you look at the five changes that we did from the Bournemouth game, it’s different.”

What Comes Next

To have any realistic chance of escaping the additional knockout round, Chelsea will have to win their remaining two matches. In the first, they welcome this season’s surprise package Pafos, then travel back to Italy to face the Serie A champions, Napoli.

“Victories in both are required, otherwise, 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 Everton team whose current form has taken to them to the surprising position of the top half in the domestic league.

Other Notes

Quote of the Day: “You know, 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 forced 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 tearing it up in the Premier League.

Fan Correspondence

“So, no wonder Wolverhampton Wanderers are in such a sad state. As any regular reader of this column 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 arriving 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 featured letter, but also a name check in another reader's letter. On a night where both clubs from Sheffield once more dropped points after leading, I am wondering: could Sheffield be proving that the regularity of representation in your mailbag is inversely proportional to the success of anything our teams are accomplishing on the field?” – another fan.