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Although The London club didn't entirely destroy their hopes of ending up in the highest eight places of the European competition group stage, they performed a precise, surgical strike on their own chances of strolling directly into the round of 16. 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 isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

The Central Problem: A Predictable Lack of Consistency

Unfortunately for Stamford Bridge regulars, the sole predictable element about the Chelsea team is a reliably erratic inconsistency, which has been widely discussed since their loss in Italy. Since seemingly confirming their credentials with an impressive beat-down of a European giant, followed by a bad-tempered draw with a London rival, the team have been defeated by Leeds, played out a snoozy stalemate at Bournemouth and have now been beaten by a average team from Serie A.

While pundits have been quick to lay the blame on a team selection approach that appears to see Enzo Maresca change his lineup constantly, the Chelsea head coach maintains that, knack and naughty step permitting, the core of his first eleven for games against strong opposition is largely set in stone.

“I think tonight, starting team, we had inside the pitch eight, nine players that play against Tottenham, they played against Barca, they play against Wolverhampton, the Gunners,” he droned. “There were eight, nine players that are the ones consistently selected for these kind of games. So if you see the five changes that we did compared to Bournemouth game, it’s a different situation.”

What Comes Next

To have any realistic chance of avoiding the additional knockout round, Chelsea will have to be victorious in their final two group games. In the first, they welcome this season’s surprise package Pafos, then travel back to Italy to face the Serie A champions, the Neapolitan side.

“Victories in both are required, if not, we try to play the playoff and then go to the following stage,” sniffed the Italian coach, whose next appointment is a match against an Everton team whose current form has taken to them to the surprising position of the top half in the Premier League.

Side Stories

Quote of the Day: “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 start on golf. So I played golf every week from when I was 10 to 13” – a star striker revealed how, had his dad got his way, he could have been on the golf course rather than tearing it up in the Premier League.

Readers' Letters

“So, no wonder Wolves are in such a poor situation. As any regular reader of this email will know, the only effective 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 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 Sheffield teams once more dropped points after leading, I am led to ponder: could Sheffield be proving that the regularity of appearances in your mailbag is inversely proportional to the success of anything our teams are accomplishing on the field?” – another fan.