🔗 Share this article

While 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 precise, surgical strike on their own hopes of waltzing straight into the knockout stages. Of course, the silver lining is that in the short one-year history of the new and not-necessarily-improved tournament, securing a top-eight finish may not be as crucial as it seems.

The Central Concern: A Monotonous Inconsistency

Unfortunately for Stamford Bridge regulars, the only consistent thing about the Chelsea team is a reliably erratic lack of consistency, which has been much remarked upon following their defeat in Bergamo. After apparently rubber-stamping their credentials with an impressive beat-down of Barcelona, and then a bad-tempered draw with Arsenal, the team have been stuffed by a Championship side, played out a dull draw at the south coast club and have now been beaten by a average team from Serie A.

While critics have been eager to point the finger on a team selection approach that seems to see Enzo Maresca rotate his team incessantly, the Chelsea head coach insists that, injuries and suspensions aside, the core of his first eleven for big matches is largely set in stone.

“I think in that game, first XI, we had inside the pitch the majority of the team that featured against Spurs, they played against Barcelona, they play against Wolverhampton, Arsenal,” he stated. “There were most of the regulars that are the ones consistently selected for matches of this magnitude. 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 avoiding the additional knockout round, they will have to be victorious in their remaining two matches. In the first, they welcome the unexpected contenders Pafos, then travel back to the continent to face the Italian title holders, Napoli.

“Victories in both are required, otherwise, we try to play the playoff and then progress to the next round,” remarked Maresca, whose following fixture is a game against an Merseyside team whose recent consistency has taken to them to the surprising position of the top half in the Premier League.

Other Notes

Notable Comment: “It's interesting, it’s actually funny because his greatest wish was me turning pro in golf. That was his biggest dream. So when I was 10, he forced me to take up 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 teeing off rather than scoring goals in the top flight.

Readers' Letters

“Well, no wonder Wolves are in such a sad state. As any longtime reader of this email will know, the only good pre-match protests involve walking from a public house that the supporters planned to be at anyway, to the stadium 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 Tuesday’s featured letter, but also a name check in another reader's letter. On a night where both Sheffield teams again surrendered points after leading, I am led to ponder: could Sheffield 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?” – a different supporter.