A PAINFUL DEFEAT

There can be few worse feelings for a football fan than being slumped on your couch at 4:30 am and wondering, “How the heck did we just blow that game?”

Unfortunately, that was the position that many a Chelsea fan in this part of the world found themselves in during the wee hours of Thursday morning as the final whistle went on one of the most disappointing Champions League results that I can remember.

Of course, we have had our share of disappointing outings in that competition, particularly last year when we failed to make the knockout stage for the first time in 11 attempts. But there was something disturbing about the 2-1 loss to Basel that was hard to shake off as we turned off our TVs and stumbled back to bed.

On reflection (and after a little bit of rest), I was able to come to terms with what made the loss so painful.

It wasn’t about the quality of the opposition because while Basel may not be regarded as one of the big guns of Europe, the Swiss club do have a reputation for making things tough for English clubs after knocking out Manchester United from the Champions League two seasons ago and eliminating Tottenham from the Europa League last year.

The fact that we failed to close out what should have been a routine victory from a very winnable position was a bit of a factor. A goal up just before half-time and in the ascendancy for much of the second half, we really should have killed off the match instead of allowing Basel back into it.

But what probably hurt more is that we showed our opponents way too much hospitality at our fortress of a home ground and allowed them to leave in delight rather than disappointment.

Maybe we expect too much of our team when we play at home but such has been our record at Stamford Bridge since the arrival of Roman Abramovich 10 years ago that defeat is clearly not an option for us when we welcome teams to SW6 nowadays.

The main stat that was wheeled out was that it was our first home loss during the group stage of the Champions League since October 2003 which is pretty impressive when you consider that we have played in the tournament in every year of that decade and went 29 games without losing once.

But if you look beyond just those games, you gain an appreciation for just how good a record we have amassed at the Bridge during this period.

Over the course of 10 campaigns from the start of the 2003/04 season, we played nearly 300 competitive matches on our home ground and we lost only 21 of them (24 if you include penalty shootout defeats against Charlton, Burnley and Everton).

That’s a loss ratio of less than eight percent with most of those defeats coming at the hands of quality teams like Barcelona, Inter, Arsenal and Manchester United.

What is less palatable are those awful off-days when Sunderland and QPR have come visiting and somehow stolen off with what should have been three straightforward points for us.

I don’t expect that we will ever experience a return to those glory times at the Bridge when we suffered no league defeats and just a lone controversial Champions League loss to Barcelona during a remarkable four-and-a-half year spell from 2004 to 2008.

But hopefully our new generation of players can ensure that nights like those against Basel remain a rarity and that our home ground doesn’t become too inviting a place for visiting teams and fans.

It’s not that we want to be inhospitable hosts. We just want to remind our visitors that when they head back home after the game, they should remember to leave the points behind.