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Key Moments

• The Chelsea forward gives Chelsea the lead in the opening period.
• Atalanta the stronger side after the interval and draw level through the striker.
• The Belgian attacker grabs a late decisive goal for the home side.
• Loss means Chelsea drop to eleventh place in the group stage of the tournament.
• The top eight qualify automatically for the last 16.

The London club's hopes of securing a place automatically for the Champions League knockout stages were suffered a setback as their Italian opponents overturned a deficit to claim victory in Bergamo.

The two teams entered this game with the same points tallies in the initial stage of this season's competition, having secured three victories, drawn, and lost to be on 10 points.

For large parts there was little to separate them in this encounter too, although Chelsea got their noses in front in the opening 45 minutes when Joao Pedro finished the captain's cross.

But The Serie A side remained a danger going forward, with former Premier League attacker causing issues for the backline.

James fired wide in the after the break but Atalanta upped the pressure and rightfully equalised when former West Ham United striker Gianluca Scamacca a cross.

The winger drove a strong effort straight at the keeper but Atalanta scored the decisive strike in the closing stages when the Blues defenders retreated from the midfielder, who made no mistake with a powerful strike.

Chelsea tried to salvage a draw in stoppage time but a superb stop by Marco Carnesecchi denied Pedro.

The outcome means Chelsea slip out of the top eight—the spots that qualify automatically for the next round—to 11th with two league phase fixtures left to play.

The Bergamo club, meanwhile, leap up to third, three points ahead of the Londoners.

Blues Breakdown - Worrying Form Persists

This was a deeply frustrating result for Chelsea as even a point was leaving them well placed to achieve the top-eight finish they need to avoid the uncertainty of the qualifying play-off round.

But they let their concentration slip in defence with seven minutes left on the clock and their opponents took full advantage.

The Italians are in rich vein of form at the moment so this was always going to be a challenging test for the Blues, but they will be annoyed to be departing with no points after securing the early advantage.

But the wider issue is that this perpetuates Chelsea's concerning streak of results in all tournaments.

Since beating the Spanish giants 3-0 at the close of November they are now without a win in their last four games.

Excessive Rotations Turning Out to Be Costly?

Chelsea boss Maresca made five alterations for this game as he continued his strategy of rotating players in and out of the starting lineup.

The rotations here followed after he implemented the same number for the defeat to Leeds United and six for the draw with AFC Bournemouth prior to the journey to Bergamo.

Maresca will view squad rotation as vital as he tries to handle players' workloads and compete both at domestically and in Europe, but he insisted the core group of players remains the unchanged for key fixtures.

"I think in this match [in] the starting lineup we had eight or nine players who played against Tottenham, Barcelona, and the Gunners," he said.

"If you look at the five alterations that we did compared to the previous game it is different but it is the eight or nine players playing in that match.

"The players who played this evening are the individuals playing almost all the games."

Up Next for These Clubs?

The Blues' next Champions League game sees them host the Cypriot side on Wednesday, 21 January (20:00 GMT).

The Italian team, meanwhile, host Athletic Bilbao at the same time.