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Chelsea win but miss chance for a vital free bonus point as they look to avoid playoff

Chelsea squeaked to a 1-0 win over Pafos in the Champions League last night, a win they needed as they aim to finish in the top 8 places and avoid the two legged play off at the end of February.

Chelsea miss massive chance to earn a free point

The Champions League table with one game to go.

Manager Liam Rosenior seemed happy just to get the three points – and to a degree, so were the crowd. But it’s not as simple as that. In fact, goal difference is about to make a huge difference in this competition, and Chelsea just missed their chance to rack up numbers on that count.

Playing at home against the lowest UEFA ranked team in the competition was the perfect chance to build our +6 difference far higher. Boosting that would effectively have given us a bonus point over all those other sides level with us in the table.

As it stands, we’re one of EIGHT teams on 13 points going into the final week. And a win over Napoli in Naples, already a tall order, could end up being for nothing because we failed to put away 3 or 4 goals last night.

“You always want to win by bigger margins. But the reality of our situation is now we’re in the top eight. If we win, we have a fantastic chance to go through,” Rosenior said post game.

We can’t help but feel that’s an overly rosy view.

In other news…

Breaking down Pafos proved to be very difficult. Chelsea huffed and puffed in a dire first half, and only slightly improved after the break. We need to see a lot more from the attack in the weeks to come.

Rosenior also took questions about Liam Delap – he denied the striker was lacking confidence after another display without a goal. We still expect the Englishman to start against Crystal Palace this weekend – and he will hope there’s more space to exploit in that game.