Chelsea's week of psycho-babble, defeats and pointless tactical notes : Liam Rosenior era aleady feels in trouble

Feeling the heat : Picture by @YTJourno

In the end, it was pretty much a massacre. And a feeble one at that, with little resistance on show.

Chelsea shipped two early goals against Paris Saint-Germain on Tuesday night to virtually flatline their hopes before they could even stir. Already 5-2 down from the first leg, there was to be no way back.

It seemed somehow entirely in keeping with the week the club has had, with a defeat to Newcastle United, the huddle fiasco, news that Reece James may be out for a while and, way more significantly, that the club has been found guilty of serious financial breaches dating back to the Roman Abramovich years.

There is now a backlash against the Blues amid accusations of excessive leniency shown them over a £10m fine and suspended transfer ban, when some clubs have been hit with points deductions for seemingly lesser infractions.

The first thing to say about Chelsea's elimination from the Champions League was that there was no disgrace in losing to the superb European champions, who look like they have the weapons to take their defence of the title all the way to this year's Budapest final.

But what will have hurt watching Chelsea fans was the manner of the surrender and the nagging feeling - if it was not already there when he was first appointed - that Liam Rosenior is heading down the same path as Graham Potter. A promising young coach who looks out of his depth at such a high-stakes club.

The optics were not good when the Chelsea coach was seen scribbling notes down to Alejandro Garnacho with the game already dead and buried. The triple substitution on 59 minutes when he withdrew best players Cole Palmer, Joao Pedro and Enzo Fernandez felt like a capitulation and did not go down well with the fans.

Then there was Saturday's ridiculous new-age defence of the centre spot huddle against Newcastle that Rosenior defended as an act of "respecting the ball." That's just not a relatable explanation for the Matthew Harding Stand brigade. They know performative nonsense when they see it.

That bid for some sort of a psychological edge was probably a response to the Carabao Cup visit to the Emirates when Rosenior took offence to the Arsenal players 'encroaching' the Chelsea half pre-match. But it was all so lame.

Rosenior with much to ponder : Picture by @CapFootballUK

"Six minutes in and another mistake that we make takes the wind out of our sails and then when you go two goals down so early and five goals down on aggregate, it's a really, really difficult evening," Rosenior said after the 3-0 defeat, which made it 8-2 on aggregate.

 "We obviously wanted to put up more of a fight than we did."

When asked whether that contentious triple substitution was an admission that many of his players are knackered, Rosenior said: "It's not an admission. The reality's the reality of where the group are."

He then proceeded to make exactly that admission.

"They've played over 100 games in 18 months," he said. "They've had no break in terms of international games - the travelling that, say, Joao Pedro, Enzo Fernandez and Moises Caicedo do to South America. It's not an excuse - this a by-product of success of the Club World Cup and it's a great thing that the club achieved.

"You're seeing with Reece [James], you're seeing with players that if we don't manage their minutes then the likelihood of getting injured is increased. I want to make sure we're in this competition next season as a minimum. We're still fighting for an FA Cup. I have to make maybe really difficult decisions that at the time probably don't look great, to be honest.

"You never want to take off your best players when you're five goals down in the tie, but I want to make the right decisions for this football club in the long term as well."

Long term. That is not something Chelsea coaches are usually afforded. Enzo Maresca oversaw a 3-0 triumph over PSG in the Club World Cup final but that didn't buy him longevity.

Asked about the need to ensure the defeat does not result in a deeper slide in form, the Chelsea boss said: "We have to. That's my job. How I go about that is how we always go about it.

"We need to be resilient. We need to make sure we go to Everton [at the weekend] with an organisation, with a freshness and an intensity in our team because we want to be in this competition next season - and if we perform like I know we can, we can get there without the individual mistakes that we're making at the moment."

It's not just the players who will need to be resilient. Rosenior knows he will have to be too.