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While Chelsea didn’t completely torpedo their prospects of ending up in the top eight of the Bigger Cup group stage, they performed a precise, surgical strike on their own hopes of strolling directly 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 place in the top eight may not be as crucial as it seems.

The Central Problem: A Predictable Lack of Consistency

Unfortunately for the club's supporters, the only consistent thing about the Chelsea team is a monotonously predictable inconsistency, which has been much remarked upon following their loss in Bergamo. Since seemingly confirming their quality with an commanding victory of a European giant, and then a bad-tempered draw with a London rival, the team have been defeated by a Championship side, played out a snoozy stalemate at the south coast club and have now been beaten by a mid-table side from Serie A.

Although critics have been quick to lay the blame on a team selection approach that seems to see Enzo Maresca change his lineup like a kebab shop’s elephant leg of doner meat, the Chelsea head coach insists that, knack and naughty step permitting, the core of his starting lineup for games against strong opposition is largely set in stone.

“In my view tonight, first XI, we had inside the pitch the majority of the team that featured against Spurs, they play against Barca, they played against Wolves, Arsenal,” he stated. “There were eight, nine players that are the ones playing every time for these kind of games. So if you look at the five changes that we did from the previous game, it’s different.”

What Comes Next

To have any realistic chance of avoiding the additional knockout round, they will have to be victorious in their final two group games. In the first, they welcome the unexpected contenders a Cypriot team, 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 extra round and then go to the following stage,” remarked Maresca, whose next appointment is a game against an Merseyside team whose current form has propelled them to the dizzy heights of the top half in the domestic league.

Other Notes

Notable Comment: “It's interesting, it’s somewhat ironic because his greatest wish was me turning pro in golf. That was his biggest dream. So when I was 10, he pushed me to take up golf. So I played golf every week from when I was 10 to 13” – a star striker explained how, if his father had his preference, he could have been teeing off rather than tearing it up in the Premier League.

Fan Correspondence

“Well, no wonder Wolves are in such a sad state. As any longtime reader of this column will know, the only effective 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” – 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 clubs from Sheffield again 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 value of anything our teams are accomplishing on the field?” – a different supporter.