🔗 Share this article

While The London club didn't entirely destroy 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 waltzing straight into the round of 16. Of course, the good news is that in the short one-year history of the new and not-necessarily-improved competition, achieving a top-eight finish isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

The Central Issue: A Predictable Lack of Consistency

Sadly for the club's supporters, the sole predictable element about the Chelsea team is a reliably erratic inconsistency, which has been widely discussed following their loss in Bergamo. Since apparently rubber-stamping their credentials with an commanding victory of Barcelona, and then 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 selection policy that seems to see the coach rotate his team constantly, the manager maintains that, injuries and suspensions aside, the core of his starting lineup for big matches is mostly fixed.

“In my view tonight, starting team, we had on the field the majority of the team that featured against Spurs, they played against Barcelona, they played against Wolves, Arsenal,” he droned. “We had most of the regulars that are the ones consistently selected for these kind of games. So if you see the several alterations that we did from the previous game, it’s a different situation.”

What Comes Next

For a genuine opportunity of avoiding the Bigger Cup playoff round, Chelsea will have to win 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 Italian title holders, the Neapolitan side.

“Victories in both are required, otherwise, we try to play the playoff and then progress to the next round,” sniffed the Italian coach, whose following fixture is a game against an Merseyside team whose current form has taken to them to the surprising position of seventh in the Premier League.

Side Stories

Notable Comment: “You know, 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 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 teeing off rather than scoring goals in the Premier League.

Readers' Letters

“Well, no wonder Wolves 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 name check in another reader's letter. On a night where both clubs from Sheffield again dropped points after leading, I am wondering: could the city be proving that the regularity of appearances in your mailbag is inversely related to the success of anything our teams are accomplishing on the field?” – a different supporter.