Chelsea punished for pathetic show

The Frenchman was looking at his old Real Madrid terrier best, seemingly up for the fray for once. Then he did the unforgivable. After a bit of a handbags tussle and tumble with Andreas Zikos, the frustrated Greek got up and slapped Makelele airily on the back of the neck. Zikos may have got sent off anyway yet Makele decided to give the referee a helping hand by walking a couple of steps and deciding it was time to crumple to the ground.

It was pathetic. With any justice, he'd have got sent off along with Zikos. Instead, he got a booking which is going to keep him out of the return leg in a fortnight.

Ultimately, though, Makelele did himself or his side no favours. Monaco's players were outraged and their coach Didier Deschamps noted: "Then my players found in themselves resources which I could not have explained." Fired by indignation, even the usually soporific home crowd turned on Makelele as the Principality's public enemy No1. He seemed so fazed, he lost both focus and form.

That's when Ranieri lost the plot too. Where do we start? He is of the old Italian conservative school which believes in holding on to what you've got. So perhaps the rumoured visit to Roman Abramovich's yacht in the harbour had seen him get too much sun as he brought on a third attacker, Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink, for Mario Melchiot.

With that, he moved a confused Scott Parker, who'd gone to the touchline thinking he was the one who was going to be substituted, to full-back and then seven minutes of his new career later, removed Parker to let the giant bit part centre-back Robert Huth look equally out-of-position instead. Bizarre.

With 20 minutes left, he had used all his substitutes and Juan Sebastian Veron, the first of them at halftime, already looked completely shattered having been shifted from the left to right flank with increasing ineffectiveness.

Instead of stretching the depleted opposition out wide, Ranieri's new 4-3-3 formation only played into their hands. The team's shape had gone and with it so had the conviction. The lightning home skipper Ludovic Giuly, best player on the pitch, started finding holes.

He set up Fernando Morientes dazzling eighth goal of this Champions League campaign and substitute Shabani Nonda stole ahead of John Terry to score with his first touch.

Ranieri took all the blame but the players knew better. During that last 15-minute capitulation, who apart from the estimable Lampard had ever looked like a real leader out there? He remains one good reason why of course this tie can still be turned around and even Deschamps was predictably dismissive of Ranieri's suggestion that Chelsea now only have a 20 per cent chance of making the final.

"He's an intelligent man because he knows how to put pressure on his opponents by saying that sort of thing," noted the Frenchman. "I'd say it's maybe 51-49 in our advantage."

The advantage is certainly bigger than that. Marcel Desailly might not play the second leg once UEFA review film of a wayward elbow on Morientes who appeared to claim that the Frenchman elbowed him in the face.

Desailly refused to discuss the incident saying: "Write what you want about that, I only want to talk about football."

With the breathtaking pace of Giuly combined with the brilliant marksmanship of Morientes, Monaco looks well-equipped to deliver a fatal blow on the counterattack, so you'd fancy them to score at least once at Stamford Bridge.

"Only the best performance of the season could help us now," conceded Ranieri, hardly needing to add that he is going to require a few season's best performances from his multimillion pound signings to have even the remotest chance of saving his own skin.

I wonder if Makelele may care to reflect on that as he sits out the second leg at the Bridge.