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While Chelsea didn't entirely destroy their hopes of finishing in the highest eight places of the Bigger Cup opening phase, they performed a precise, surgical strike on their own hopes of automatically qualifying for the round of 16. Of course, the silver lining is that in the short one-year history of the recently revamped tournament, achieving a place in the top eight isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

The Core Issue: A Predictable Inconsistency

Sadly for the club's supporters, the only consistent thing about Enzo Maresca’s side is a monotonously predictable lack of consistency, which has been much remarked upon following their loss in Bergamo. After apparently rubber-stamping their credentials with an commanding victory of a European giant, followed by a bad-tempered draw with a London rival, Chelsea have been stuffed by Leeds, played out a snoozy stalemate at the south coast club and have now been beaten by a mid-table side from Italy's top flight.

While critics have been eager to point the finger on a selection policy that seems to see Enzo Maresca rotate his team like a kebab shop’s elephant leg of doner meat, the manager insists that, injuries and suspensions aside, the nucleus of his first eleven for games against strong opposition is mostly fixed.

“I think tonight, starting team, we had on the field the majority of the team that featured against Tottenham, they played against Barcelona, they played against Wolves, the Gunners,” he stated. “There were eight, nine players that are the ones consistently selected for these kind of games. So if you look at the five changes that we did compared to Bournemouth game, it’s a different situation.”

The Path Forward

To have any realistic chance of escaping the additional knockout round, they will have to be victorious in their final two group games. In the first, they host the unexpected contenders a Cypriot team, then travel back to the continent to face the Serie A champions, the Neapolitan side.

“Victories in both are required, otherwise, we try to play the extra round and then go to the next round,” remarked Maresca, 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 somewhat ironic because his greatest wish 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 explained how, had his dad got his way, he could have been teeing off rather than tearing it up in the top flight.

Fan Correspondence

“Well, no wonder Wolves are in such a sad state. As any longtime reader of this column will know, the only good pre-match protests involve walking from a pub 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” – a correspondent.

“I see that a reader not only got the previous letter o’ the day, but also a mention 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 frequency of representation in your letters section is inversely related to the value of anything our teams are accomplishing on the field?” – another fan.