THIS could be the last meaningful respite in Chelsea’s miserable Premier League campaign. Sure, there’s the FA Cup, but the roadblock there is Manchester City and, there is little question as to what matters more: overcoming Paris St Germain and, hopefully, going on a run in the Champions League.

It matters to Chelsea as a club and it matters as a group of individuals. As a club, it is not hard to do the maths. Finishing between 10th and 13th (their position going into the weekend) will result in £40 million less in broadcasting revenue this year than they had projected (because of the increase in the TV deal, in the end their revenue will be comp-arable, but what matters is the budgeting). No European football next season would mean anywhere from £30m to £70m in lost revenue. Since Chelsea made a £23.1m loss in 2014-15, and when they do get back into Europe, Financial Fair Play restrictions will be tighter than today, some extra cash now would help and give them more freedom in this summer’s inevitable rebuilding. Because what’s clear is that this club won’t look much like it does today come August.

And that’s where the individuals come in. There’s pride, sure, but there are also an awful lot of guys needing a shop window to show that what happened in the first half of 2015-16 was somewhere between an aberration and a nightmare.

There is John Terry playing for a contract and, while you can understand the club line that no decision will be made until the new manager is identified, it feels strange to imagine his Chelsea career ending with a whimper. A few heroic European performances could well be enough to tug at the heartstrings of both Roman Abramovich and whoever replaces Guus Hiddink.

Guys like Oscar and Diego Costa know full well that if they don’t want to be in China next year, they need to show something to European suitors. They are stuck in that upper-middle tier of players who will fetch a huge fee in the Chinese Superleague but for whom the types of clubs they would want to play for will need some persuasion.

Then there’s Eden Hazard. Nine months ago, he was on the cusp of ascending to the game’s second-highest rung, just beneath Lionel Messi. Thirty-one games and zero goals from open play – and just one from the spot – later, his value has plummeted. So much so that whatever plans Chelsea might have had to sell him to help finance the rebuild are out the window as he’s clearly a depressed asset.

These players need the Champions League to remind football of who they are, which is something other than the depressing bunch we’ve seen thus far. Whatever jump-start Hiddink was meant to give them has come and gone. True, the Dutchman had not lost a game going into the weekend, but they have only moved up four places under his command and the top four are now three points further away than when Jose Mourinho left.

In other words, it’s up to them. That may be Chelsea’s single greatest reason for optimism heading into this clash with Paris St Germain, a club that have lost just one game all season.

There is also the memory of last year’s acrimonious elimination at the hands of the Parisians. And, maybe, deep down, the memory – for some, anyway – of what happened the last time Chelsea had a horrendous start to the season and they sacked their Portuguese manager. That season, 2011-12, they went on to win the Champions League.

LAST week, the five candidates for the Fifa presidency travelled to Miami in a bid to secure the endorsement of Concacaf and their 35 votes ahead of the election on February 26.

Concacaf’s reply? Umm... we’re not sure. Why don’t you show us a bit more love first, then we’ll decide.

OK, so they didn’t say that, but that was pretty much the message.

“It wasn’t touched upon, we do have an extraordinary congress the day before the Fifa election, something could happen over there, but I’m not privy to that,” said Concacaf spokesman Jurgen Mainka.

The endorsement only means so much, as individual FAs are still free to do as they please, but there’s a reason Jack Warner, Concacaf’s disgraced former head, was a virtual king-maker. Bloc-voting is still rife, especially amongst smaller FAs. Indeed, Concacaf members love their blocs so much that there are two sub-confederations under their umbrella: the Caribbean Football Union (with 25 members) and Uncaf, which includes seven Central American nations. Uncaf is backing Gianni Infantino, the Uefa general secretary, while CFU boss Gordon Derrick made sure everyone knew his peoples’ votes were still up for grabs when he said: “No, we haven’t decided, we have listened and we are listening... and we will be discussing it amongst our members.”

And so the organisation that has seen their past three presidents indicted got to hear stuff like this from one of the candidates.

“Your confederation is not the cause of Fifa’s problems. It is a victim of Fifa’s problems.”

Yeah, that’s right. Because it was Fifa’s dysfunctionality that led Concacaf officials to take cash handouts and turn it into a kleptocracy several scales of magnitude greater than anything they ever managed in Zurich.

Yep, politicians will say anything.

A VICTORY for fan power? Or a clever business decision? Liverpool’s 180-degree turn from its announcement to raise ticket prices on certain seats for six high-profile games (adding up to 1200 out of 860,000 or 0.14 per cent) to £77, was universally praised as were the supporters for making their protest civil, but firm.

The curious thing is that in addition to affecting a tiny number of Anfield denizens, the price hike would apply to the club’s most expensive non-hospitality seats and, therefore, presumably to those folks who could most afford it. The thinking was that those who can afford £59 a game can manage to fork out an additional £108 over the course of the year. Which isn’t unreasonable.

Yet the focus of the debate should not have been on those seats but on the broader issue. Liverpool will be earning an additional £36m in revenue from their new stand, plus at least as much again from the TV deal. Inflation is running at less than 0.1 per cent. Why they felt the need to raise prices at all – especially for a minimal boost to revenue, an extra £21,600 from those 1200 seats – with a massive windfall on the horizon is the real issue here.