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While The Blues didn’t completely torpedo their prospects of ending up in the highest eight places of the Bigger Cup opening phase, they executed a precise, surgical strike on their own hopes of waltzing straight into the knockout stages. Naturally, the silver lining is that in the brief history of the new and not-necessarily-improved competition, securing a top-eight finish isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

The Central Concern: A Predictable Lack of Consistency

Sadly for Stamford Bridge regulars, the only consistent thing about the Chelsea team is a monotonously predictable inconsistency, which has been widely discussed since their loss in Bergamo. After apparently rubber-stamping their credentials with an commanding victory of Barcelona, followed by a bad-tempered draw with a London rival, Chelsea have been defeated by Leeds, played out a snoozy stalemate at the south coast club and have now been beaten by a mid-table side from Serie A.

While critics have been quick to lay the blame on a selection policy that appears to see Enzo Maresca rotate his team like a kebab shop’s elephant leg of doner meat, the Chelsea head coach maintains that, knack and naughty step permitting, the nucleus of his first eleven for games against strong opposition is mostly fixed.

“In my view in that game, first XI, we had on the field eight, nine players that featured against Tottenham, they played against Barcelona, they played against Wolverhampton, Arsenal,” he stated. “We had most of the regulars that are the ones playing every time for matches of this magnitude. So if you see the five changes that we did from the previous game, it’s a different situation.”

What Comes Next

For a genuine opportunity of avoiding the additional knockout round, they will have to win their final two group games. In the first, they host this season’s surprise package Pafos, before heading back to Italy to face the Serie A champions, Napoli.

“We need to win both, if not, we try to play the extra round and then go to the following stage,” sniffed Maresca, whose next appointment is a game against an Everton team whose current form has taken to them to the surprising position of seventh in the domestic league.

Other Notes

Quote of the Day: “It's interesting, it’s actually funny because his biggest dream was me becoming a professional golfer. That was his biggest dream. So when I was 10, he pushed 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 teeing off rather than tearing it up in the Premier League.

Fan Correspondence

“Well, no wonder Wolverhampton Wanderers are in such a sad state. As any regular reader of this email will know, the only effective pre-match protests involve walking from a public house that the supporters intended to visit 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” – 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 Sheffield teams again surrendered points after leading, I am wondering: could Sheffield be proving that the frequency of appearances in your mailbag is inversely proportional to the success of anything our teams are accomplishing on the field?” – a different supporter.