🔗 Share this article

Although The Blues avoided a total demolition of their hopes of ending up in the top eight of the European competition group stage, they performed a precise, surgical strike on their own hopes of automatically qualifying for the knockout stages. Of course, the good news is that in the short one-year history of the recently revamped competition, achieving a place in the top eight isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

The Central Concern: A Monotonous Inconsistency

Unfortunately for Stamford Bridge regulars, the sole predictable element about Enzo Maresca’s side is a reliably erratic lack of consistency, which has been widely discussed following their defeat in Italy. After apparently rubber-stamping their quality with an impressive beat-down of Barcelona, and then a bad-tempered draw with Arsenal, the team have been defeated by Leeds, played out a dull draw at Bournemouth and have now lost against a mid-table side from Serie A.

Although pundits have been quick to lay the blame on a team selection approach that appears to see the coach rotate his team incessantly, the Chelsea head coach maintains that, knack and naughty step permitting, the core of his starting lineup for games against strong opposition is mostly fixed.

“In my view in that game, first XI, we had inside the pitch the majority of the team that featured against Tottenham, they play against Barcelona, they played against Wolverhampton, the Gunners,” he stated. “There were eight, nine players that are the ones consistently selected for these kind of games. So if you see the several alterations that we did from the Bournemouth game, it’s a different situation.”

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. First up, they host this season’s surprise package Pafos, before heading back to the continent to face the Serie A champions, the Neapolitan side.

“We need to win both, if not, we try to play the extra round and then go to the next round,” remarked Maresca, whose next appointment 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

Quote of the Day: “It's interesting, it’s somewhat ironic because his biggest dream was me turning pro in golf. 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 revealed how, had his dad got his way, he could have been teeing off rather than scoring goals in the top flight.

Fan Correspondence

“So, no wonder Wolves are in such a poor situation. As any regular reader of this column will know, the only good pre-match protests involve walking from a public house that the supporters intended to visit anyway, to the ground that they were inevitably 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 Tuesday’s 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 the city be proving that the regularity of representation in your mailbag is inversely related to the value of anything our teams are achieving on the field?” – a different supporter.