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While Chelsea avoided a total demolition of their prospects of ending up in the highest eight places of the Bigger Cup opening phase, they executed a targeted blow on their own hopes of waltzing straight into the knockout stages. Naturally, the silver lining is that in the brief history of the recently revamped tournament, 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 Enzo Maresca’s side is a reliably erratic lack of consistency, which has been much remarked upon since their defeat in Italy. After apparently rubber-stamping their quality with an commanding victory of Barcelona, and then a bad-tempered draw with a London rival, Chelsea have been defeated by Leeds, played out a snoozy stalemate at Bournemouth and have now lost against a mid-table side 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 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 big matches is mostly fixed.

“In my view in that game, starting team, we had inside the pitch the majority of the team that featured against Tottenham, they played against Barca, they play against Wolverhampton, the Gunners,” he stated. “There were eight, nine players 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.”

The Path Forward

To have any realistic chance of escaping the Bigger Cup playoff round, Chelsea will have to win 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, otherwise, we try to play the playoff and then go to the next round,” sniffed Maresca, whose next appointment is a game against an Everton team whose current form has taken to them to the surprising position of the top half in the domestic league.

Other Notes

Quote of the Day: “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 forced 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 on the golf course rather than scoring goals in the top flight.

Fan Correspondence

“So, 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 pub that the supporters intended to visit 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 featured letter, but also a name check in another reader's letter. On a night where both clubs from Sheffield again surrendered points after leading, I am wondering: could Sheffield be proving that the regularity of appearances in your letters section is inversely related to the success of anything our teams are accomplishing on the field?” – a different supporter.