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Although Chelsea didn’t completely torpedo their prospects of finishing in the highest eight places of the European competition opening phase, they executed a precise, surgical strike on their own hopes of automatically qualifying for the knockout stages. Naturally, the good news is that in the brief history of the new and not-necessarily-improved tournament, achieving a top-eight finish isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

The Core Issue: A Monotonous Lack of Consistency

Sadly for the club's supporters, the only consistent thing about the Chelsea team is a monotonously predictable lack of consistency, which has been widely discussed following their defeat in Italy. Since seemingly confirming their quality with an impressive beat-down of a European giant, and then a feisty stalemate with Arsenal, the team have been stuffed by a Championship side, played out a snoozy stalemate at Bournemouth 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 team selection approach that appears to see the coach change his lineup 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 in that game, starting team, we had inside the pitch the majority of the team that featured against Spurs, they played against Barca, they played against Wolves, Arsenal,” he droned. “We had most of the regulars that are the ones consistently selected for matches of this magnitude. So if you see the five changes that we did compared to Bournemouth game, it’s different.”

What Comes Next

For a genuine opportunity of escaping the additional knockout round, Chelsea will have to be victorious in their final two group games. In the first, they host the unexpected contenders Pafos, before heading back to the continent to face the Serie A champions, the Neapolitan side.

“Victories in both are required, otherwise, we try to play the extra round and then progress to the next round,” sniffed Maresca, whose next appointment is a game against an Everton team whose recent consistency has taken to them to the dizzy heights of the top half in the domestic league.

Side Stories

Quote of the Day: “It's interesting, it’s actually funny 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 practiced 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 Premier League.

Readers' Letters

“Well, no wonder Wolves are in such a sad state. As any regular 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 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 one correspondent not only got Tuesday’s letter o’ the day, but also a name check in another reader's letter. On a night where both clubs from Sheffield again dropped points after leading, I am led to ponder: could the city be proving that the regularity of appearances in your letters section is inversely proportional to the value of anything our teams are accomplishing on the field?” – a different supporter.