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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 executed a targeted blow on their own hopes of strolling directly into the round of 16. Naturally, the silver lining is that in the brief history of the new and not-necessarily-improved tournament, achieving a top-eight finish may not be as crucial as it seems.

The Core Concern: A Monotonous Inconsistency

Sadly for the club's supporters, the sole predictable element about the Chelsea team is a reliably erratic inconsistency, which has been much remarked upon following their loss in Italy. Since apparently rubber-stamping their credentials with an impressive beat-down of Barcelona, and then a bad-tempered draw with a London rival, Chelsea have been stuffed by Leeds, played out a snoozy stalemate at Bournemouth and have now been beaten by a average team from Serie A.

Although pundits have been eager to point the finger on a team selection approach that appears to see the coach 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 first eleven for games against strong opposition is largely set in stone.

“I think tonight, starting team, we had inside the pitch the majority of the team that play against Spurs, they played against Barca, they play against Wolverhampton, the Gunners,” he stated. “There were most of the regulars that are the ones playing every time for these kind of games. So if you see the several alterations that we did from the previous game, it’s different.”

What Comes Next

To have any realistic chance of escaping the additional knockout round, they will have to be victorious in their remaining two matches. In the first, they host the unexpected contenders Pafos, then travel back to the continent to face the Serie A champions, Napoli.

“Victories in both are required, if not, we will face the extra round and then progress to the next round,” sniffed the Italian coach, whose next appointment is a match against an Everton team whose recent consistency has taken to them to the surprising position of the top half in the Premier League.

Side Stories

Notable Comment: “It's interesting, it’s actually funny because his biggest dream was me turning pro in golf. That was his ultimate ambition. 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” – Erling Haaland revealed how, had his dad got his way, he could have been teeing off rather than tearing it up in the Premier League.

Readers' Letters

“Well, no wonder Wolves are in such a poor situation. As any longtime reader of this email will know, the only good pre-match protests involve marching from a public house that the supporters planned to be at anyway, to the ground that they were always going to. Just arriving 10 minutes late? That’s how long it takes fans to get to their seats anyway” – a correspondent.

“I note that one correspondent not only got the previous 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 Sheffield be proving that the regularity of representation in your letters section is inversely proportional to the success of anything our teams are achieving on the field?” – another fan.